The Cottage Garden Almanac

This little book was never meant to be written — it grew, as gardens do, slowly and without fuss, from decades of muddy hands and quiet mornings and the peculiar joy of finding the first snowdrop nose-deep in February frost. I offer it to you not as an authority, but as a companion; an old woman's honest account of what the kitchen garden has taught her, season by patient season, year by unhurried year. May it find you well, and may your boots always be close to hand.

My garden has fed us, healed us and gladdened us for over fifty years. It began as a scrap of tired ground and became, with patience, the beating heart of the cottage. I do not garden by clever charts or Latin names — I garden by the seasons, by the feel of the soil, by what my mother taught me. In this almanac I have set down the whole turning year: when to sow the beans, when to lift the potatoes, when to let a bed rest. Whether you have acres or a windowsill, a garden will teach you the same quiet lesson — that good things come to those who tend them.

— Agnes