Another of my Garden Books

It is Garden Book Review again over at Roses and Other Gardening Joys. This meme was started in January and attracted 16 bloggers last month, who posted reviews of “any book about gardening, gardens, or books that has a garden influence in it.”

Last month I posted a review of one of my own books, a book with photos from Kew Gardens, and I thought I would do the same again; post an article about one of my own books. This book is also a typical coffee table book, with lots of photos and very little text, but the story behind the book is different. The book is called My Garden and all the photos are from my tiny garden, taken over a period of two years. I made the book as a present for my father, to show him what I do on my computer. My parents live in Southern Spain and they have never been to visit where I live in London, so the only way to show them my garden is to send photos. And of course these days, the photos are via email, or on my website, not paper photos as I used to send. My father is not very keen on using the computer; my mother does, but not my father. He would rather sit with a book, and still uses encyclopaedias, in book form, whenever he is unsure of something. Only trouble is that his encyclopaedia is my old one from 1984. To get him to go on the computer and Google has turned out to be impossible. And the same thing goes with accessing my website to see the pictures from my garden; not very keen on that, no. So that’s why I decided to put my best pictures from my garden into a book and give it as a Christmas present to him, so he could see what I am doing in my garden, and on my computer, in a format he enjoys and appreciates - a book.

The photos in the book are divided into sections, and all the Latin names are here, for those who are curious about plant names. I am not going to go into a lengthy speech about how good this book is; after all I made it…. I am simply letting you see for yourself so you can make up your own mind. Below are a few photos from the book, but you can also SEE THE WHOLE BOOK AT BLURB who prints my books. Click on Preview Book and wait for it to load, choose full screen in the bottom right corner and then you can turn the pages just as you do in a normal book. If you prefer to see the book in full size you can SEE IT ON MY WEBSITE AS PDF, and in that size it is much easier to read the text too.

This was my very first book, and I can’t tell you how excited I was when it came in the post from the printers! Since then I have self published 3 more books, and I am now putting the finishing touches to book number five. Book number 6 is already well started and number 7 is too but I have had to put number 7 on the back burner for now. I just got too many projects running at the moment :-)

That was my garden book review for February, the book 'My Garden', by yours sincerely, printed for the first time in 2008 and republished with Blurb in 2010, 52 pages.

Next month I will have to find someone else’s book to review, as I have no more garden books of my own to show you! Or perhaps I need to concentrate on getting my projects finished, so I can get some more garden books of mine to review :-) Until next time, take care!