Grow Fruit
Essential Know-How and Expert Advice for Gardening Success
Holly Farrell · DK, 2023
The one in-print, affordable, genuinely useful fruit book we could find — and we looked hard.
There is a different DK book also called Grow Fruit, by Alan Buckingham (ISBN 9780241239117). Make sure you're buying 9780241593264.
What's actually in it
- More than 40 fruit trees, bushes, canes and vines — apples, pears, plums, cherries, soft fruit and cane fruit.
- Unusual crops included: kiwi and pineapple guava among them.
- Planting, training, pruning and harvesting for each type.
- Aimed squarely at someone who has never grown fruit.
What it actually says
Specifics from inside the book — so you can judge whether it's telling you anything you don't already know.
- More than 40 fruits grouped as trees, bushes, canes and vines, aimed squarely at someone who has never grown fruit.
- The selection mixes staples with genuinely unusual choices — plums, damsons, blackcurrants and blueberries sit alongside kiwi, pineapple guava (feijoa) and persimmon. Including those three in a 144-page UK beginner book is a real editorial decision.
- Step-by-step technique instruction written jargon-free — sow, grow, plant, propagate. It is a how-to, not a variety-selection reference.
What we couldn't checkWe could not get inside this one either — no preview, no scan, no substantive review, and the only "Grow Fruit" reviews online are of a different DK book with the same title. It is on this shelf because the fruit shelf is otherwise empty, and we'd rather say that plainly.
Buy it if
You want an apple tree, or a row of raspberries, and every veg book you own stops before it gets there.
Don't buy it if
Anyone who already grows fruit and wants depth on rootstocks, restorative pruning or orchard management.
Where it falls short
144 pages across 40-plus crops is a starting point, not a reference. This is not an RHS title, despite sitting on the same shelf as several. It is on this list mostly because the fruit shelf is otherwise empty — the standard fruit references are all out of print, which we think is a real failure of gardening publishing rather than a gap we should paper over.
Who wrote it
Farrell holds the RHS Wisley Diploma in Practical Horticulture, a competitive two-year hands-on qualification, after a history degree and a year of college study to qualify for entry. A placement on the RHS's The Garden during the diploma turned her towards writing, and she has since produced seventeen-plus books, several under RHS and Kew imprints. Read her honestly: she is a writer first and a practising gardener second, unusually prolific across a very wide range of subjects, and she now gardens in Guernsey — a notably milder climate than most of her readers'.
Where it was written
DK UK, written for British conditions.
The facts
- AuthorHolly Farrell
- PublisherDK
- Published2023
- FormatPaperback, 144 pages
- ISBN-13
9780241593264 - LevelBeginner
Checked against publisher listings, UK retailers and library records in August 2026. If any of this is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
Where to get it
Buying secondhand? Match the ISBN above — several books on this shelf have editions that look identical but aren't.