"A lovely book for green-thumbed readers to read in the winter as they sit by the fireplace and await spring."― Publisher's Weekly In Natural Selection , Dan Pearson draws on ten years of his Observer columns to explore the rhythms and pleasures of a year in the garden. Traveling between his city-bound plot in South London and twenty acres of rolling hillside in Somerset, he celebrates the beautiful skeletons of the winter garden, the joyous passage into spring, the heady smell of summer’s bud break and the flaring of color in autumn. Pearson’s irresistible enthusiasm and wealth of knowledge overflow in a book teeming with tips to inspire your own space, be it a city window box or country field. Bringing you a newfound appreciation of nature, both wild and tamed, reading Natural Selection is a deeply restorative experience. An award-winning British landscape and garden designer, plantsman, writer and journalist, Dan Pearson ’s love of all things gardening stemmed from a young age. At ten years old, while his classmates were reading Enid Blyton and Alan Garner, he was devouring garden catalogues in his spare time. Dan Pearson went on to become one of the most celebrated gardeners of our time. Following in the footsteps of the legendary Vita Sackville-West, he was a weekly columnist for the Observer for over a decade. He writes regularly for publications including The Times , Daily Telegraph and Gardens Illustrated . Natural Selection A Year in the Garden By Dan Pearson Faber and Faber, Ltd. Copyright © 2017 Dan Pearson All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-78335-117-6 Contents List of Illustrations, ix, Introduction, xi, January, 1, February, 39, March, 73, April, 95, May, 127, June, 167, July, 205, August, 241, September, 277, October, 301, November, 331, December, 363, Acknowledgements, 397, Index, 399, CHAPTER 1 January J Because the first month of the year is the darkest, you might think it is the most inert in the garden, but January is not a month in which everything drops back into inactivity. Our benign climate means that there is always something pushing against the season to draw us out into the garden as witnesses. The foliage of celandine against bare earth, the perfume of witch hazel: each holds your attention and ostensibly has the floor to itself; but look again and the garden is full of intrigue. Low, raking light catches seedheads from a season spent, and plant skeletons provide a spectacular framework for frost if you let them stand, as I do, in the belief that it is good to see the garden run the full course of its cycle. I love our four seasons, and winter is never one to fear, for it is then that there is room to think. The frenzy of activity that comes with the growing season is absent and you can look up and around and take in your surroundings without the burning feeling of the yard-long list of tasks. You can see a tree's structure and history in its naked branches, just as you can see the plants that are ready for winter pruning. Pace yourself with the winter work and use this time to plan for building in change, to keep a garden feeling vital and refreshed. Tasks map the season, but although we have several weeks ahead of us to revitalise and re-do, there is time in January to embrace the winter garden. 1 January, Hillside FIELDS OF DREAMS * * * Above ground and in the cold and the low light of January, the garden is at its quietest moment. The rust-coloured, velvety buds are yet to break on the hamamelis, and though the catkins are formed on the hazel they are clutched tight and sensibly waiting. Even the snowdrops are showing little above the ground, and for the first time in ages I feel I have the time to think. I can see now what my neighbour meant when she said that she looks forward to the slower pace of winter, for the growing season was frenetic: the rush of sap and weight of growth never abating once the tide had turned in the spring. Hunger and exhaustion finally drove me in with the revelation that I had sometimes gone a whole day without ever stopping to look at my surroundings. I can afford that luxury now that the weeds are in stasis, turning my back on the kitchen garden for a little and starting my day down by the stream, walking the length of it where it slips along the boundary. From here I can look up to the slopes where the garden will one day be and amble through what we have achieved in the first year here. I lost only two of the 400 hedge plants and saplings that went in last winter – and I'm asking myself if it was the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in the Rootgrow that were added while planting that got them through the drought in spring. The newly planted fruit trees also recovered after they were stripped of foliage by the sheep. Their willingness to return suggests they already had a well-developed root system. I also experimented this year with not incorporating muck or compost into the planting