Gardening is never ideal. Especially at this time of year when the few hours of daylight are almost inevitably sodden and grey. We may enjoy working the garden now, but it's usually a penitential pleasure: what we do now will give us rewards in the next life - or season, if you will.
Gardening books, however, are ideal. It never rains in gardening books (although growth is always lush) and even the winter-time images are a crisp chiaroscuro of white frost and black plant shapes. Nowhere do you see the brown, sloppy mush that greets the Irish gardener's eye. Perhaps that's why we soil-workers are almost as attached to our books as to our plots. In our libraries plants behave in an orderly fashion, blooming on time, in the right part of the border and with no mildew, black spot or slug holes.
Every gardener needs this dose of fantasy gardening to see the dark months through. And how convenient that Christmas - and its welcome crop of books under the tree - falls right in the middle of this fallow period! But this year, there has been such a glut of garden-related books that I'm thinking of building a paper feature for my patio with some of the sillier ones. Thank goodness there are some really worthwhile ones about too.
One that I cavalierly dismissed after a cursory glance was The Essential Garden Book by Terence Conran and Dan Pearson (Conran Octopus, £30 in UK), thinking that it was no more than a glossy money-spinner for two high-profile style champions. But after hearing enthusiastic reports from designers and plantspeople alike, I borrowed a copy for a better look. How wrong I was. This is a wonderfully inspiring book. It centres on design, but ranges through all the elements that make up a garden. A brief, but choice plant directory is included at the end, along with basic information on gardening techniques.
Two further books devoted to the making of gardens are the spiral-bound Creating Boundaries and Screens and Creating Beds and Borders, both by Richard Bird (Ryland Peters and Small, £16.99 in UK). They're part of a series of gardening workbooks, and are a bit like painting a garden picture by numbers. But this is not to be sneezed at: I'm sure there are countless gardeners who wish they'd had detailed instructions before embarking on constructing a raised bed, a simple trellis or even a bit of corner planting. Another helpful - and fun - book for busy people is Mix and Match Gardening by Lindsay Thomas (Batsford, £15.99 in UK) which has 49 planting plans using just 250 different plants. The ringbound pages are split horizontally so that you have two books in one, an upper one with the plans and a lower one with the plant descriptions. The idea is that you leave the book open at your plan ("A Scheme for Dry Shade" or "A Shelter Belt for Mild Coastal Regions" for instance) and flick through the plant pages to read about the recommended plants.
I wrote specifically about plant books three weeks ago, but since then, a planty trio from Timber Press has come to my attention: The Well-Tended Perennial Garden by Tracy DiSabato-Aust (£22.99 in UK), Herbs in Bloom by Jo Ann Gardner (£25 in UK) and Bamboos by Christine Recht and Max F. Wetterwald (£23.99 in UK). Timber Press originated in Oregon - it has since branched out to a British office - and its books have a common-sense, workaday flavour that I respect. Like American roads, they get you efficiently to the destination with the minimum of frill, but plenty of authority. Take note: if it's gloss and glister you're after, you won't find it here.
Glossy accomplished writing, glistering with wit and loaded with expertise is what you will find in the book of letters between Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd. Dear Friend and Gardener (Frances Lincoln, £14.99 in UK) was commissioned by the publishers, so the letters were written to order, but this doesn't seem to affect their honesty or glorious gossipiness. These two great writer-gardeners converse not just about plants and gardens, but also about food, visitors, dogs, sickness and health. It's a great read.
More Beth Chatto can be found in the form of the newly-revised The Damp Garden (Orion, £8.99 in UK) and The Dry Garden (Orion, £7.99 in UK). They're part of a general move by publishers to reissue great gardening classics. Look out also for these paperback Bloomsbury Gardening Classics (all £7.99 in UK): Down to Earth by Anne Scott James, The English Flower Garden by Willi am Robinson, The English Gardener by William Cobbett and Second Nature by Michael Pollan. And speaking of classics, don't forget Helen Dillon on Gardening (Town House £10.99), a collection of this superb plantswoman's columns from the Sunday Tribune.
And staying in Ireland, here's a book that will interest committed plantspeople, especially those with an interest in Irish-reared plants: Daisy Hill Nursery, Newry by E. Charles Nelson and Alan Grills (Northern Ireland Heritage Gardens Committee, PO Box 252, Belfast BT9 6GY. £18.50 incl. p. and p.). The nursery closed in 1996 after over a century in operation, but its history lives on in this meticulously-researched book.
The Garden Enthusiast column will return in the new year.