Christopher Lloyd's Gardening Year

Gardeners move to a different rhythm than the rest of the world, taking cues from the seasons rather than the dates on a calendar. Most gardeners remember first and last frost dates more readily than birthdays and mark Halloween according to which leaves have already fallen rather than by the fact that it's October 31. This is why books that are written seasonally, month by month, such as Christopher Lloyd's Gardening Year, are the most useful and enjoyable of all garden books. They correspond to our own rhythms and to the way we see the world.

Lloyd has lived at Great Dixter in East Sussex, England, all of his life, and he is now nearly 80. In his new book he tells the story of his garden's emergence from dormancy in the early spring, its high summer glories, and its gradual, colorful autumn decline. No one else writes about their garden so intimately, personally, engagingly, but having written a weekly column for Country Life magazine since 1963, Lloyd has had plenty of practice. Lloyd is famous for his tropical garden, as he was one of the first to extensively use exotic plants in a temperate garden. In his August chapter, he recounts ridding his garden of roses, replacing them with cannas, bananas, brugmansias, and dahlias in a riot of hot colors.

Another of Lloyd's enthusiasms is cooking from the garden, and he writes of sowing lettuces successively to provide greens from spring to October and gives advice about growing fruit and tomatoes. He also loves ornamental grasses, water gardening, vines, and flower borders. All the monthly tasks and triumphs of making and caring for a complicated garden are captured here in color photographs and in Lloyd's opinionated and knowledgeable prose. "I am a bit snooty about escallonias," he begins, and then goes on to tell which are worth letting into your garden. This is a book worth letting into your heart and onto your bookshelf. --Valerie Easton