Bees are vital for the future of the planet, for without their dedicated pollinating skills many crops would eventually fail. This delightfully illustrated book is a homage to bees, revealing many facets of their lives, including homes, flight patterns and defence. It also describes how to attract bees to your garden and, essentially, the art of talking to them! The lives of bees are interwoven with our own, but how much do you know about them? Which scents do bees prefer? How do bees transport pollen? How far can bees fly? Do specific colours attract bees? Do bees prefer native flowers? Then there is honey - a near-miraculous elixir that in earlier generations was an integral part of life as a sweetener and food preserver. It can be fermented with water and yeast to create mead, a drink that has been enjoyed for thousands of years. This book is dedicated to bees and to ensuring that they continue to live in harmony with humans in bee-friendly gardens. Click on the image to look inside:

The British have always been a nation of gardeners. Our gardening history began even before the Romans, who brought Mediterranean plants which still flourish across Britain. Gardening grew in the sixteenth century and a distinctively British style became a major export in the eighteenth century. Today, the annual Chelsea Flower Show is an international festival, and our garden designers are in demand all over the world. This book traces the history of British gardening over 450 years through the stories of twenty-six key figures, showing what drove them, and their role in the evolution of Britain's gardens. Their work reveals changes in taste and society down the centuries. Familiar names are featured, such as 'Capability' Brown, Humphry Repton, Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West and Christopher Lloyd, together with less generally known figures such as John Gerard, whose Herball of 1597 inspired generations of plantsmen, the Tradescants, pioneer plant hunters, and J. C. Loudon, nineteenth-century champion of smaller gardens. In the present day, we meet Beth Chatto, advocate of the right plant in the right place, and John Brookes, who did for gardening what Elizabeth David did for cooking. Their achievements provide a colourful history and inspiration to every gardening enthusiast.