Chloe Foster is a horticulturist. A passionate one. She has written The Rookie Gardner for, well, the rookie who is just starting out on the gardening journey.

She kicks off with the basics: what exactly is a plant? What are its parts? ‘Sciencey’ names and so forth. Enough to inform but not overwhelm. Then she walks us through some fundamentals: soil, light, slope and climate. From there to garden styles and designing your garden through to composting, ‘planting hacks’, fertilising, propagating, weed control, pruning, growing veggies and fruit and tending houseplants, among other things. Foster encourages us to ‘walk lightly on the earth’ with sustainable methods. Why spray a weed if you can pull it out?

Scattered throughout are a range of achievable fun projects – like building a frog home, creating a pot of Italian herbs to creating a pallet compost heap.

Her plan with this book was to help you ‘nail the basics’ and it’s all there ready for you to do so. and she has succeeded. It’s a terrific book for the novice gardener as it takes you through all the steps to make your own garden but includes all the information you need from planning to planting to caring for it, so it will continue to thrive.

Although packed with a lot of information, Foster’s enthusiasm is infectious and combining this with her fun, engaging language, it all makes this book very accessible.

The Rookie Gardener perfect springtime gift for a budding gardener to dig into.