A Year in a Small Garden: Creating a Beautiful Garden in Any Space

A Year in a Small Garden follows horticulturist and presenter Frances Tophill as she creates her new garden in a terraced house in Devon.

Book cover A Year in a small Garden by Frances Tophill

Working in a small space, the book documents Tophill’s journey to bring life to her garden, including tips and tricks for you to achieve similar results in whatever spaces you have at home.

Her sixth book, ‘A Year in a Small Space’ is structured around the stages of building her small garden, and branches out to include small community gardens Frances works with, as well as projects to create in small spaces at home – with a focus on growing food and planting in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way. Shot throughout the year, the book includes photographs by the award-winning photographer, Jason Ingram.

“The book tracks that process from discovering this garden, investigating it, observing it, making plans and trying to enact all of things that I have learned over my career about ecology, gardening, growing food, – all of those things and trying to work out how to fit all of that into this very modest sized space”, explains Tophill.

Known from her regular appearances as a presenter on Love Your Garden and Gardeners’ World, Frances Tophill is a British horticulturist, conservationist and author. She studied for a bachelor’s degree in horticulture with plantsmanship from the Scottish Agricultural College and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. In June 2022, her first show-garden won a platinum medal and best in show at Gardeners’ World Live at the NEC in Birmingham. Frances also works with the Royal Horticultural Society’s Campaign for School Gardening to promote gardening to young people, and is a keen quilter and amateur potter.

Gardeners’ World: A Year in a Small Garden (Penguin Books) will be released on the 25th of April, 2024.