 Hello again. It's spring. The sun is shining some of the time. Everything is growing, lots of birds and bees and other creatures are flying around doing their thing and it's time to get out in the garden and this is I've been a little bit stuck trying to finish my book because I keep looking out the window and thinking I should be out there doing things outside. So I thought given that I'm going to do this little video about books I would do a video about a couple of books to do with gardening and they both come out in the last month or so. The first one I'm going to share with you is called Edible Paradise. It's by a woman called Vera. I wish I could pronounce her surname. I could not do it justice. I'm sure we don't get very well trained in foreign languages in England but there there it is. Vera I do apologize for not knowing how to pronounce your surname. She's from the Netherlands and she's been gardening for over 30 years and this book is all about her experiences around learning how to grow plenty of food. Well what she say here herbs, flowers and veggies in any space and it's very much focused on a permaculture approach. It's very much organic. It's no dig which is people are becoming a bit more aware of how to do no dig particularly with Charles Downing's books and and she quotes him one of the people that inspired her and it's a lovely book. It's full of colour. It's always easier to skin these things from the back to the front. Both of the books I'm going to mention have a guide to the months of the year and what you can do at different months. So if you're starting now which is May as I'm doing this video you can just go straight to May and see okay what kind of things are we doing what do we need to do in May and some of us are perhaps more experienced gardeners and I think of these two books this book certainly pitched at perhaps somebody has a bit more experience but it doesn't assume that you know how to do things do everything. So it's a lovely book regardless of whether you have a lot of experience or not because there's something in here for everybody and I was certainly enjoying reading this book. She has quite a lot about polycultures. So polycultures are how we put plants together in what we call in permaculture guilds. So a guild is a collection of species but in this case we're talking plants primarily which are placed together deliberately in order to create mutual benefit beneficial relationships. So for a fruit tree we might place around that fruit tree in its proximity plants that may be providing nitrogen fixation or attracting pollinators or accumulating particular minerals of value to that plant or attracting pest predators that might prey on the plant and so on and we put these deliberate collections of species plants primarily together because it could include birds a bird could be a pest predator that might be attracted to maybe eating the bugs in the fallen fruit which stopped that cycle of those bugs infecting the fruit next year. And she starts off by looking at what you can do in containers in the garden. Back to this how do I show this and put it to the camera at the same time. As you can see it's full of beautiful photographs both of these books full of lots of lovely photographs. Her favorite flowers to eat. How you might put things together so she looks at polycultures from the perspective of different levels. We might call sort of structural diversity in a space. So how she might do that with a container for instance. Her garden her and her husband's garden with the children and what they do through the year and so there's lovely pictures of those of the gardens throughout the year. The different things she does different varieties of plants that she recommends. It's a really lovely book. She has a blog. Well I say a blog. Yes there is a blog and the YouTube channel which is a bit more familiar with which is in Dutch and there's an English one an English language one as well which is really good. And yes I just highly recommend this book. It's really nice. Particularly the focus on how do you put plants together in order to create beneficial polycultures. That's really nice. Lots of lovely photographs. So she's been growing since she was 12. This chap Hugh, Hugh Richards, he's been, he's had a YouTube channel since he was 12 and has been gardening with his parents since he was three. So he's just turned 20 I believe and he's already written his first book. It's amazing and it was very lucky to meet you. He came on a permacost design course with us last year and his book has come out subsequent to this and he's an amazing young man. Most people are young by my standards these days and not only has he written this book he's also got this YouTube channel now which has had over he's got over 100,000 subscribers. It's called Hugh's Nursery. Well worth checking out and he's really focused on helping people to learn how to grow food for themselves. And of course as permaculturists one of the key things we can do in order to improve and reduce our impact on the world is to grow some of our own food. And Hugh's mission really is about making that really easy for people. Now, there's lots of books about gardening around. So Hugh's focus on the book, the idea for the book is how do you grow lots of different vegetables, about 19 different vegetables in one place. So it's kind of looking at a polyculture is kind of not quite crop rotation, but he takes that into account. He looks at how you could create a three meter by 1.2 meter or 10 foot by four foot bed and grow lots of different vegetables. And once we get past the beginning part, which just looks at how to make compost and make your raised bed, very kind of simple stuff. He gets into the plans the year plans. And so each of these raised beds is divided into 10 rows along the bed. And he takes you through what to plant in each row throughout the whole year. And that's the basis of the book. So how to grow the different plants or hints and tips that he has for that. And each each month has its own section. So we now to May. So each time you're looking at what's in the bed, which would be in the bed is telling you how to grow things and what to raise when and when you plant them out. And someone to say forth and the whole book is the book is mostly focused around all of that. And then towards the end, once you got to the end of your first year, he then gives you some ideas for future years. So in particular situations. So cool climate planting, low rainfall planting, a salad bed, and so on. And this one is all about, if you don't have much time, you want to make it really easy. And then he talks a little bit about rotation and so on. But I'd say, of course, what's in this book is not new. But the way he's put it together, for me, I've not seen that before. And I think it's a really nice way of supporting people. And this is very much for people who are beginners. And even those of us who are not quite so beginners who like to think about how we might teach other people to do things in such a small space. Because really, what he's demonstrating is how much food you can grow in such a small space. So to write books for the spring, to people very much authors worth supporting, check out their channels and enjoy your summer of gardening.