Review: My Gardening Life by Mary Berry
National treasure Mary Berry’s love of green spaces shines through in her new gardening book.
National treasure Mary Berry’s love of green spaces shines through in her new gardening book.
When, aged 77, in 2012, Mary Berry was on Desert Island Discs, she chose the RHS A-Z of Garden Plants as the book she would take to the island so that she could dream and make plans for her garden when she was rescued.
From digging for victory in wartime Bath, to her lovely Georgian house in Henley-on-Thames, through 60 years of married life, Mary has lived and breathed her gardens, every year devising “a little scheme” for improvement.
Whether in a “humble backyard”, a 3.5 acre-spread, or in her present “more manageable” (still huge) domain, she has created beautiful spaces for peace and solace.
Mary is, she says, “no expert”, but – drawing inspiration from visits to Wisley, Sutton Place and Kew, consulting with such pros as Bunny Guinness, Alan Titchmarsh and Sarah Raven, whom she interviews for this book – she has both passion and vision, and, you feel, knows every flower she grows by name and nature.
Here she is in springtime, full of lively expectation, awaiting the great trumpet blast of colour that is daffodil “Rijnveld’s Early Sensation”, the “fresh and strong” narcissus “silver chimes”, “Angelique” tulips, “Jeanne d’Art” crocuses, the first shoots of the hydrangea “Annabelle”…
More than just a patchwork of plants, a perennial work in progress, a project, a physical challenge, a living larder and place for alfresco lunches, Mary’s garden is invested with memories, which she shares on these pages.
They will hold even the dilettante gardener enthralled.
My Gardening Life by Mary Berry (RRP: £25, DK),published February 26, 2026.
(Hero image credit: GettyImages)
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