Allen & Unwin Natural Selection book House & garden English Hardcover 448 pages

Reading this book is as restorative and inspiring as an afternoon spent in the garden.

The perfume of witch hazel in January.The skywards race of clematis in April.The blaze of sunflowers in September.As the year rolls round, our gardens rise and fall to its rhythms. Every week is different from the next, but there is also reassurance in the cyclicality - the inevitability of spring blossom and the flare of autumn berries at the other end of the season.Dan Pearson takes us through twelve months in the garden, from his city-bound plot in Peckham to twenty acres of rolling hillside in Somerset. Through a beautifully wrought landscape of words he shares with us his wealth of knowledge, and teaches us to see the gardens around us with new eyes, whether in the countryside, village or city. Natural Selection is a book to bring you year-round joy and a newfound appreciation of nature, both wild and tamed.

Dan Pearson is an award-winning British landscape and garden designer, plantsman, writer and journalist. For the last 20 years he has written a weekly gardening column for a number of broadsheets including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and most recently the Observer. His books include The Garden, The Essential Garden Book (with Sir Terence Conran), and Spirit: Garden Inspiration and Home Ground. He is a contributing editor to Gardens Illustrated magazine. www.digdelve.com / @thedanpearson