Review: A Year in a Small Garden

I still remember the excitement of getting my first – and very small – garden. I also remember the mistakes made and the things that should have been done differently. A Year in a Small Garden would have been a useful book to have had then.

Despite being a professional gardener and TV presenter for many years, Frances Tophill had never owned her own garden before buying her home in Devon. The sense of it being a ‘pinch me’ moment comes through on every page – the book even opens with this thought: “Buying a house is something I never thought I would do.”

In A Year in a Small Garden, she charts how she set about putting her own mark on not a blank canvas but “a lovely little space, with wood store, a lawn and a couple of trees”.

(I was given a copy of the book in return for a fair review.)

Ideally, she would have waited a year to get a real feel for the garden – advice all owners of new plots are given – but deadlines for filming for Gardeners’ World stopped that. “Do as I say, not as I do,” she tells us. The lure of plant-buying also proved too strong and she admits to buying things before having somewhere to plant them.

A Year in a Small Garden starts with 10 key things to remember – including take your time! It’s good advice that includes thinking about blurring boundaries, where the light falls and how your plans will affect neighbours.

There are chapters on design and work Frances did to clear the space, including digging up a bamboo that was spreading. One chapter was on installing her greenhouse, familiar to anyone who saw her feature garden at BBC Gardeners’ World Live (you can read my interview with Frances about it here.)

While important as a space to grow more tender things, its positioning did cause some problems as it’s a large structure in a relatively small space.

A Year in a Small Garden is as much about Frances’ gardening philosophy as it is about how to create a garden. True there’s information on basic seed sowing, how to grow tumeric and ginger, and suggestions for suitable small trees, but there are also discussions on whether we should have lawns and what influences her plant choices. As much as possible, she will choose plants that are edible, medicinal, useful in some way or good for wildlife.

“I don’t want the garden to just be something to look at,” she tells us.

With only a limited space, the planting will have to be mixed with vegetables in amongst non-edibles in a true cottage garden style: “I would like to dislodge the shame of vegetables and invite them in.”

Planting inspiration has come from visits to other plots, including Edible Bristol, a community-led food growing scheme in the city, and these are woven into Frances’ diary entries, sketches and longer pieces on garden projects. Photographs by Jason Ingram help to bring it all to life.

Creating a truly wildlife friendly space is high on her agenda and she views never beating the mice to the strawberries as a success.

“To have fed all my strawberries to the mouse I never see gives me real deep hope, and a sense of well-being.”

Gardens are never finished so the book is a record of merely the beginning. It would be a useful companion to anyone else starting out on the journey.

A Year in a Small Garden by Frances Tophill is published by BBC Books with an RRP of £26. You can buy it here for £19.20. (If you buy via this link, I receive a small commission. The price you pay is not affected.) Alternatively, you may wish to buy from an independent bookseller here. All prices correct at time of publication of this post.

Enjoyed this? You can read more of my gardening and garden-related book reviews here.

Make sure you don’t miss future posts by adding your name to my mailing list.