The Well-Tempered Garden

First published in 1970, this is a working gardener's book about ornamental planting rather than a picture album. Christopher Lloyd writes from the mixed borders, meadows, and kitchen garden of an English country house, treating soil, season, colour, and plant character as practical problems. Chapters cover trees, shrubs, perennials, bulbs, roses, vegetables, and the year's work, with advice on combinations, pruning, and what to discard. He argues for experiment and for plants that earn their space, and he describes successes and failures as a record of one garden's habits. The book is horticultural prose about making and keeping a garden through the year.

Bound in cream cloth blocked with design in grey, purple and orange by Petra Börner. Pale brown endleaves. Purple slipcase.