Gardeners need to read as well as weed. For practical advice, I still turn to older classics. For new directions, I look to the titles of each year, concentrating my studies in particular first-class shops.

The most intelligently run shop for garden books in America has to be the outlet in the New York Botanic Garden, in the Bronx. It is a recent development and will give you expert advice for presents this Christmas, whatever the recipient’s interests and climatic zone at home. Over in France, chic garden-watchers know that the first place to go is the Maison Rustique, at the heart of Parisian life at 26 Rue Jacob. In England the venue has to be Hatchards on Piccadilly, London. Not only does the shop have the advisory service of Barry Delves, who has headed its gardens department for longer, even, than book-buyers have been asking for titles by Rosemary Verey but it stands on the site where the Royal Horticultural Society was founded in the early 19th century, an event that it honours on a plaque among the paperbacks in the basement.