Gardens of Inspiration explores the influences of 15 of the best garden writers, including Christopher Lloyd, Mirabel Osler and Dan Pearson. Photos are by Vivian Russell, who wrote Monet’s Garden: Through the Seasons at Giverny: Behind the Scenes and Through the Seasons Each essay certainly gives an insight into the personality of its writer, as they open up about how they treat the landscape and why they are motivated to work in this way. Beth Chatto writes beautifully about Cedric Morris, and how, “… one winter evening… I was stunned to hear Cedric say I would never make a good …

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The minimalist garden, published in 1999, is a seven chapter (plus an introduction) tour about how ‘less is more’ in the garden – leading to elegant, tranquil, sublime garden spaces. In his introduction, Christopher Bradley-Hole writes, “There is something essentially right about minimalism, something which corresponds to the emotions and feeling of well-being and energy.” You turn the page to a picture of Ryoan-ji. Minimalism in the garden is a hard one to judge – we may look one day at a scene and crave more variety, more inspiration, less clean line and more chaos. The next day the same scene could ease …

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We love books at Modern Mint (we hope to publish a number of garden writers one day) and have added a bookshop to share with you the authors we think are great. Here are our current bestsellers, in order (and a few we think should become so!) (We just realised Amazon are currently discounting the Jake Hobson book!) and a few we love… If you’re looking for more inspiration, please do email us (or use the search button from Amazon below) and we will send you a list of other ideas we like! Our ‘must-reads’ tend to number the 100’s…