The Well-tempered Garden

First edition, third impression.  478pp, plus numerous colour plate illustrations.  Green cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on brown relief on spine.  Green endpapers.  8vo.  Cloth a little rubbed on extreme edges.  Internally neat, clean, bright and tight.  In its original illustrated dust wrapper, very slightly toned and some mild signs of compression on rear panel.  Dust jacket now protected in an archival quality Mylar wrapper fitted without the use of tape or adhesives.

A scholar among professional gardeners, Christopher Lloyd was widely known for his regular gardening columns in Country Life and for the famous garden he created at his home in Great Dixter in Sussex.  In this volume he discusses many aspects of gardening and garden plants, combining his passionate love of plants with a critical intelligence.  Illustrated with his own photographs, he examines hundreds of common garden plants – their beauties, their various uses, their cultivation and their shortcomings.  In doing so he has written a remarkable gardening book, a revelation of pleasures on first reading and a veritable reference thereafter.