COMMON OR GARDEN

'Encounters with Britain's 50 Most Successful Wild Plants'. Botanist, writer and expert gardener Ken Thompson has set out to chart Britain's most abundant wild plants and reveals the secrets of their success. Beautifully illustrated by Sarah Abbott, we meet survivors and prickly customers like the bracken and holly, and five shrubs which make the cut like the blackthorn, dog rose, elder, hawthorn and hazel, and the not-so-green daisy, ribwort plantain, white clover and yarrow. There are two buttercups, sycamore, cow parsley and hogweed, creeping and spear thistles, ash and goosegrass, ivy and dandelions, brambles to the common nettles. Thompson explains the key traits that have led them to flourish across Britain and shares his tricks for making your garden a haven for green life. He notes that many of the apparently weird or pointless names we call these plants can often tell you a lot about them and how many were useful for lighting houses of the rural poor or telling the age of a hay meadow, for making a musical instrument or providing a reliable bounce for a ball. Some common plants provide an insight into the latest development in plant taxonomy or trigger scientific controversies such as the nature of the prehistoric landscape. 240pp, gorgeous colour artwork.