Rhapsody in Green: A Writer, an Obsession, a Laughably Small Excuse for a Vegetable Garden

A unique celebration of gardening written by an award-winning novelist.

'Excellent book.' Nigella Lawson

'Charming, inspiring, uplifting... pure lovely.' Marian Keyes 'Read Rhapsody in Green. A novelist's beautiful, useful essays about her tiny garden.' India Knight

'Glorious...for anyone who loves fruit, vegetables, herbs and language. It makes you see them with new eyes.' Diana Henry

'A witty account of 'extreme allotmenteering' for all obsessive gardeners' Mail on Sunday

'Gardening is not a hobby but a passion: a mess of excitement and compulsion and urgency and desire. Those who practise it are botanists, evangelists, freedom fighters, midwives and saboteurs; we kill; we bleed. No, I can't drop everything to come in for dinner; it's a matter of life and death out here.'

Novelist Charlotte Mendelson has a secret life. Despite owning only six square metres of urban soil and a few pots, she is an extreme gardener; the creator of a tiny but bountiful edible jungle. And like all enthusiasts, she will not rest until you share her obsession.

This is the story of an amateur gardener's journey to addiction: her attempts to buy lion dung from London Zoo and to build her own cold frame; her disinhibited composting and creative approach to design; her prejudices (roses, purple flowers, people with orchards); and her passions: quinces, salad-leaves, herbs, Japanese greens and ancient British apples. It is a story of where fantasy meets reality, of the slow onset of a consuming love and, most of all, of how gardening, however peculiar, can save your life.