Niall Edworthy

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The Curious Bird Lover’s Handbook

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The Curious Gardener's Almanac

It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide

Packed full of recipes, sages, tips and histories, it is a perfect addition to any greenhouse collection... this book has the capacity to encourage, inform and inspire... A perfect present for the green-fingered

Crammed with weird facts and ephemera, time-honoured tips and old sayings... this charming book defies categorisation. It'll come in handy for the pub quiz, though

Collection of nuggets and ancient wisdom related to gardening

The Curious Gardener's Almanac is a beautifully written and produced gem of a book. Just the right size to fit into the pocket of a raincoat it is full of helpful hints garnered over the ages

Calling on curiosities, wisdom, customs, tips, recipes and quotations spanning hundreds of years, The Curious Gardener's Almanac contains enlightening facts and useful hints for the gardener

Perhaps this book should come with a warning to all aspiring horticulturalists: Niall Edworthy is not a gardener! After moving house, and finding himself with a plot to call his own, he decided to get his hands dirty. However, he knew absolutely nothing. After mistaking garlic for asparagus under the watchful and surprisingly tolerant gaze of his neighbour, he decided to seek semi-professional help. The result is this quite amazing collection of time-honoured wisdom, gathered from diverse sources, and covering subjects like good and bad bed-fellows (plants, that is), recipes for all your wonderful home-grown goodies, and titbits like the fact that aubergines were once thought to be poisonous to Christians! This almanac is a definite must for the dabbler as much as for the dedicated gardener

[A] quite amazing collection of time-honoured wisdom, gathered from diverse sources... This almanac is a definite must for the dabbler as much as for the dedicated gardener

Centuries Of Practical Garden Wisdom

The Curious Gardener's Almanac contains over 1000 entries of remarkable information about flowers, vegetables, fruits, trees, herbs, insects, birds, water, soil, tools, composts, climate, recipes, gardens and gardeners, myths, superstitions, biodynamics..In short it is a collection as profuse and variegated as gardening itself. Woven into this wealth of knowledge are famous quotations, anecdotes, traditional sayings, lines of verse, and words of rural wisdom. The spirit and focus of the Almanac is British but the wider picture is international as so much of our gardens originated from overseas. 
Dry or dull information has no place in the almanac and its presentation is as appealing as the content.

Celebrating the garden in all its splendid diversity and rich history: a collection of remarkable facts, curiosities, ancient wisdom and customs, tips, recipes, lists, quotations and ephemera.

The British garden is not just a haven of peace and tranquility, or a mere plot of land for vegetables, fruit and flowers; it is a living encyclopaedia of curious and fascinating knowledge, the roots of which spread deep into human experience and culture. 
 
The Curious Gardener's Almanac is a collection of remarkable facts, curiosities, ancient wisdom and customs, time-honoured tips, traditional recipes, lists, quotations and general ephemera, celebrating the British garden in all its splendid diversity and rich history. Dry or dull information has no place in the Almanac. The choice of entries is neither categoric nor random: what has found its place here has done so on the merit of its curiosity or genuine use, and nothing else. The topics covered are as profuse and variegated as the world of gardening itself. 
 
Delve in and be intrigued, amused, surprised, delighted and inspired.

Writing under a variety of nom de plumes, Niall Edworthy has written over a dozen books covering a wide range of subjects from military history, biography and outdoor survival to general humour and sport. 
In 2002 Niall and his family swapped their London house with its tiny, paved north-facing terrace for a new home with a 'proper' garden at the foot of the South Downs. Niall's love affair with gardening thus began as an arranged marriage, but quickly blossomed into a passion. The more time Niall spent in the garden, however, the more he realised how little he knew about his new obsession. This book is the result of his quest for more knowledge of gardens and the wider natural environment.

The Curious Gardener's Almanac

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Niall Edworthy

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