If you’re hooked on diy or just interested in interior and garden design, then this address book is made for you. It answers the most frequently asked questions and also carried some more off-beat contacts. Providing those often elusive contacts on every aspect of internal and external design, it even gives fax numbers and websites.

Designed for amateurs and professionals alike, it carries over 4,000 entries in 19 categories including gardens. Each category is sub divided into headings such as specialist nurseries, garden design courses, conservatories, wicker, rattan and Lloyd Loom furniture, fountains, water pumps and taps. At first glance, the book seems filled with interior design contacts, at the expense of gardening ones. Yet, on further reading, many suppliers are relevant to both areas, such as paint or mosaic. A useful book in a handy format – but rather expensive.

Piet Oudolf has designed parks and gardens in Holland, Germany, Sweden and the UK. Written in collaboration with Noel Kingsbury, also a garden designer and writer, he has produced a hardback book that is both beautifully photographed and thoughtfully designed – rather like the gardens inside! This book offers superb practical advice, exploring the building blocks of planting design whilst guiding you through the sheer selection of shrubs and perennials. Each chapter is categorised by themes such as form, texture, light or movement and includes charts, colour palettes, photographs and diagrams, allowing you to put theory into practice. There is a chapter on moods which includes mysticism, while the section on year-round planting explores birth, life and death.

Piet trained as an architect and this fact becomes apparent from his ideas on detail and structure, truly illustrating his passion for gardening and design. This book will appeal to both the seasoned gardener and the novice, as both a practical guide and an inspiration.

If you know that you would like climbers to adorn your house and garden walls but are unsure of what would look good where and survive well, then this is the perfect book for you. Divided into three sections it is easy to find your way around and pinpoint areas of specific interest. The opening section looks at planning and planting issues from inspirational ideas of creating space and illusions to practical considerations such as support, planting and cultivation. While section II provides more practical advice on planting the different levels of the wall from the base, to the middle area or ‘prime site’ as the book refers to it, on to the upper levels ‘higher reaches’. And if you are not already light-headed from all this information section III gets onto what is, in my opinion, the best part, the plants. Over 110 pages have been dedicated to the A-Z of annuals, wall shrubs, self-clinging climbers and many more plant categories.

Although it may seem quite pricey I think it’s a truly worthwhile purchase that will be referred to time and time again.

I’m always interested to hear the gossip and opinion, especially surrounding gardening celebrities. I’m sure if dear old Geoff had been around today you would know exactly where he would stand concerning the way gardening is portrayed on the small screen – he would be pleased. Why? Well reading through this most interesting and, at times, highly amusing book you quickly realise how Geoff himself has been responsible for popularising gardening as a matter-of-fact hobby for millions of us. His style was unique, a down-to-earth approach which won the hearts of many. This book magically paints Geoff’s life and career through national service and college, to his career as a TV presenter and prolific author. I simply couldn’t put this book down!

Gay Search pulls off a masterful stroke - revealing what a good, honest and genuine bloke Geoff was, without the usual sentimentality that so often smoke screens the real character. Geoff, never short of the odd word, would have approved!