About the Book
Whether you are taking your first steps in growing some of what you eat, or experienced and looking for inspiration, ideas and some new plants to grow, The New Kitchen Garden is for you.
Inspired by a range of gardeners growing food on allotments, on rooftops, in container gardens and in other edible spaces, many of them urban, Mark shows you the full exciting breadth of what a kitchen garden can be.
Whether you have a window sill, space for a few plants by the back door, an allotment or an acre, you'll find a series of invitations to grow any of almost 200 fruits, nuts, herbs, spices, flowers and vegetables to suit your space, time and inclination. Everything is here - the tools, the techniques, the ideas and the knowledge - to enable you to realise that vision of your own kitchen garden, wherever you live. There's also a dozen incredible edible gardens - a rooftop food forest, a courtyard of metre-square raised beds, Charles Dowding's no-dig garden, a child's container garden and Raymond Blanc's heritage garden at Le Manoir among them - their gates flung open by the gardeners to reveal their methods, ideas and techniques, with plans, key plants and photography to accompany. Mark Diacono - who was head of the gardening team at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage - captures the spirit of adventure and imagination of those growing food in the twenty-first century. He takes ideas from gardens around the world, including that of his own home, Otter Farm in Devon, with its unique blend of orchards, vineyards, forest gardens, edible hedges, perennial garden and veg patch. No matter whether you have space for a collection of pots or a small farm at your disposal, The New Kitchen Garden will show you how to create the most incredible edible garden you can.
About the Author:
Mark Diacono is lucky enough to spend most of his time eating, growing, writing and talking about food.
He is an award-winning writer and photographer and has written and/or photographed thirteen books, including A Year at Otter Farm (Andre Simon Food Book of the Year 2014), A Taste of the Unexpected (Guild of Food Writers' Food Book of the Year 2011), and The New Kitchen (Garden Media Guild Book of the Year 2015).
His refreshing approach to growing unusual and forgotten food along with the best of the familiar has done much to inspire a new generation of gardeners and cooks.
As well as his books, Mark has written for all the weekend papers, magazines as diverse as National Geographic, Simple Things and Delicious.
Mark was involved with River Cottage in the early days, appearing in the TV series and writing three of the River Cottage Handbook series.
Twitter: @MarkDiacono
Instagram: @mark_diacono