Urban Flowers book review

The best gardening book of the year, in my opinion

I’ve reviewed a lot of gardening books this year, but the best so far is Urban Flowers: Creating Abundance in a Small City Garden. Written by Carolyn Dunster with photographs by Jason Ingram, it is truly inspirational to all. It gives simple, cheap, but stylish upcycling tips to people with no gardening ability.

There are also innovative design ideas to spark the interest of jaded old hacks like me. Carolyn urges you to be yourself and reflect your style. After all, we’re quite happy to do this in our interiors or clothes, but few of us do it outdoors.

Urban Flowers – the smallest of spaces

It also encourages the reader to make use of the smallest urban space to make a pretty and/or productive mini-garden. The book shows you how to go one step further by using edible plants in recipes or making gifts. Read my review of the book Fermenting Foods at Every Meal.

There’s a real air injecting a dose of nature into the city, using containers as varied as plastic trugs, tin cans, and hessian sacks. There are even projects to undertake at different times of the year, plus guides on using colour if you’re creatively inclined. To sum up, if you’re a non-gardener, this is a great entry-level book and very fitting it is available in time for National Gardening Week (April 10-16).

Urban Flowers – ‘A flower-filled life’

Carolyn said: “I am lucky to live a flower-filled life. I grow as many flowers as possible in a small inner-city garden, cramming every available space with pots and planters that change with the seasons. From cultivating courtyard gardens to planting window boxes or growing vertically against walls and up drainpipes, there are lots of easy-to-follow projects that will inspire you to do this.”

Urban Flowers is published in hardback by Frances Lincoln and costs £20. Read more horticultural book reviews you might like – The Salad Garden, 101 Organic Gardening Hacks, Build a Better Vegetable Garden and The Jam Maker’s Garden.