There are a few simple guidelines to follow when buying a gardening book, either as a present or for yourself, writes Jane Powers
Whenever I'm asked to recommend books for gardeners, I have a well-worn, but trusty reply. If it's vegetables you want to learn about, then buy anything by Joy Larkcom (three of her books are in print at the moment). And if it's ornamentals, design or practical matters that you are curious about, then look for books that carry the Royal Horticultural Society imprimatur.
The RHS's Learn to Garden, Dorling Kindersley, £18.99 (€28.14), written by a slew of experts, was published last year. I don't know a better book, both for teaching basic gardening techniques and for revealing the mysteries of plants, soil and growing conditions. In the past, gardening manuals implied that the gardener was in charge of the goings-on in his plot, and that its successful cultivation was merely a matter of following a prescribed regime. This book, however, demonstrates that nature is entirely in control, and that a good gardener is one who understands this - and works with, rather than against its forces.
Most experienced gardeners have by now been infected with the very contagious perennial fever - thanks to the influence of various American and northern European plant designers. This versatile group of plants has been whooshed out of the herbaceous and mixed borders and painted into romantic and naturalistic swathes and waves. Breeders and plant hunters have been hard at work too, and there are more and better varieties than ever.
The new RHS Encyclopedia of Perennials, Dorling Kindersley, £25 (€37.04), is an illustrated reference book detailing more than 5,000 plants, from the latest desirables (including arisaemas and double hellebores), to the old favourites (such as hardy geraniums and hostas). As well as the expected advice on how to grow and combine them, this heavy volume offers tasty snippets of history and science regarding certain species.
As soon as you get a coveted plant, the thing is to make more of it, as insurance for the future in case it keels over and dies, and also so you can pass it on to other grateful gardeners (and get a bit back if yours bites the dust).
But, now that so many people are wedded to the idea of the instant garden, and immediately-adult plants, propagating is in danger of becoming a dying art. Thank goodness John Cushnie revives it with his characteristic enthusiasm in his How to Propagate, Kyle Cathie, £19.99), where he gives clear instructions on all the ways to increase your garden's stock, by seed, spores, divisions and cuttings, and by layering and grafting.
Another Irishman, Dermot O'Neill, gives us Roses Revealed, Kyle Cathie, £25 (€37.04), a luscious tribute to these most fragrant and glamorous of blooms. There is more Hibernian interest in Niall Mac Coitir's Irish Wild Plants: Myths, Legends and Folklore, The Collins Press, €25 (€37.04). The book, which is illustrated by Grania Langrishe, is a treasury of ancient and interesting information about our native and naturalised flora.
While we're totting up our new Irish books, it's worth mentioning that Penelope Hobhouse, doyenne of British garden design, was born in the North (she is a sister of Sir Robin Chichester-Clark and of the late James Chichester-Clark, the fifth prime minister of Northern Ireland). Her In Search of Paradise: Great Gardens of the World, Frances Lincoln, £25 (€37.04), is a ramble through garden history, from the earliest desert oases of the middle east to the many different garden styles of today. You couldn't be in the company of a more erudite garden guide.
One of the designers to whom Hobhouse pays her respects is the 20th century Brazilian heavyweight, Roberto Burle Marx, who brought bold structure and broad sweeps of brave planting to tropical gardens. His influence is celebrated in Roberto Silva's New Brazilian Gardens: The legacy of Burle Marx, Thames and Hudson, £29.95 (€44.38). A couple of dozen contemporary designers show what can be done with a striking palette of jungle and desert plants (and pots of money) in the enviable South American climate. In many cases, the results are spectacular.
New York publishers, Abrams, produce delectable coffee table books, and one of their most scrumptious is Gardens in Time, £35 (€51.86). Photographed by veteran French photographer, Alain Le Toquin, and with text by Jacques Bosser, it covers some (but not all) of the same territory as the Hobhouse book. Many of the double-page, panoramic shots are drop-dead gorgeous: pin sharp, perfectly composed, and taken at exactly the right millisecond in time, when the light is at its most beauteous (and fleeting).
The horticultural charms of our winters are finely-tuned and exquisite, compared to the plenitude of the warmer months. In The Winter Garden, Cassell Illustrated, £16.99 (€25.17), Val Bourne tells us how to brighten the dark months with berry, stem, bark and bloom, how to catch the frost on a tracery of plant material, and how to create a structurally-pleasing garden in these lean months. She is a fine and intelligent writer, and this is a well-observed and appealing eulogy to the joys of the chilly season.
Charles Elliott is a retired American editor living in England, who brings a wry and often bemused viewpoint to gardening on this side of the Atlantic. His More Papers from the Potting Shed, Frances Lincoln, £14.99, (€22.21), is a miscellany of delightfully crafted writings on matters as diverse as the joys of manure, the tribulations of potato growing, the excess of Chelsea Flower Show, and the vagaries of his new leaf-blower - which "functioned rather like a stiff north-east wind, with about the same discrimination".
Elliott also likes to delve into the more abstruse areas of horticultural history. His chapter, "The Age of Guano", for instance, connects the discovery of tons of Peruvian bird dung in the 1800s (and its subsequent use as a soil amendment in Europe and America) with the modern use of chemical fertilisers. And his catalogue of disasters called "Losers" mourns the specimens and work lost by many planthunters to shipwreck, angry natives, thieves and Japanese bombs. This far side of horticulture is endlessly interesting, but is best experienced at second or third hand - preferably, while sitting comfortably in front of the fire on a cold winter's day.