How many times when we are visiting gardens, or thumbing through a glossy magazine, do we look at our own garden with mixed feelings of disappointment and despair, and exclaim 'Why can`t my garden look like that?'. The simple answer is `it can`. This book demonstrates just how easy it is to make adjustments to what is already there to make your garden stunning, whatever its size. Whether it's an issue with design, plant selection or pruning - or even lack of time - simple solutions are described in clear, jargon-free language that will appeal both to the complete novice and those with more experience. Written in an informal, easy-to-read style this book will enable everyone to have a garden they can be proud of.

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.