'He was the best informed, liveliest and most innovative gardening writer of our times' GUARDIAN 'Infuriating, irascible . a brilliant gardener and a brilliant writer' Monty Don, Observer Christo Lloyd was recognised as one of the foremost gardeners and garden writers of the 20th century. Here, for the first time, is the definitive collection of his best, most informative, and so often amusing, garden writing. Christo on gardening : Ours, in its humble way, is an art as well as a craft. At the same time it keeps us in touch with the earth, the seasons, and with that complex of interrelated forces both animate and inanimate which we call nature. It is a humanizing occupation. On weeding: Many gardeners will agree that hand-weeding is not the terrible drudgery that it is often made out to be. Some people find in it a kind of soothing monotony.

It leaves their minds free to develop the plot for their next novel or to perfect the brilliant repartee with which they should have encountered a relative's latest example of unreasonableness.