RHS Step-by-Step Veg Patch
A Foolproof Guide to Every Stage of Growing Fruit and Veg
Lucy Chamberlain, with the RHS · DK, 2020
DK's step-photography treatment applied to a veg patch: every technique shown rather than described, with three ready-made plot designs to copy.
What's actually in it
- Fundamentals — assessing your space, choosing what to grow, tools and kit.
- Planning the plot — three themed designs you can lift wholesale: Easy to Grow, Family, and Gourmet.
- Growing — the bulk of the book, crop by crop, with planners giving sow, plant and harvest timings.
- Problem solving — weeds, pests and diseases, with photography showing what trouble actually looks like rather than describing it.
- Reference and index.
What it actually says
Specifics from inside the book — so you can judge whether it's telling you anything you don't already know.
- Three worked plot plans you can copy wholesale — "Easy to Grow" (vegetables and strawberries for a steady kitchen supply), "Family" (fruit and veg mixed for maximum productivity), and "Gourmet" (for adventurous cooks).
- Crop planners giving sow, plant and harvest timings for each crop.
- Photographic problem-solving pages showing what trouble actually looks like, rather than describing it — the reason to choose this over a text-led book.
What we couldn't checkWe could not get inside this book. No preview, publisher extract or quoting review exists, and the library scans are access-restricted. Everything above is confirmed from the publisher and a reviewer who worked through a physical copy — but we won't list specific spacings or varieties we haven't seen for ourselves.
Buy it if
You learn better from pictures than prose, and you'd rather copy a proven plot layout than design one.
Don't buy it if
Anyone wanting depth on a single crop.
Where it falls short
256 pages across 50-plus crops plus planning, problem-solving and reference means roughly a spread each — it's broad, not deep. And despite "Fruit and Veg" in the subtitle, fruit is a small minority of it; the earlier edition carried 60 vegetables to 15 fruit crops. It is not a substitute for a fruit book, and tree-fruit pruning in particular can't be done justice in this format.
Who wrote it
The strongest formal horticultural credentials of the grow-your-own shelf. Chamberlain grew up on her parents' Essex market garden, studied at Writtle and Wye, holds a degree in plant sciences, spent six years at RHS Garden Wisley, edited Grow Your Own magazine for six years, and has been head gardener of a large Essex estate with a walled garden for nine. She won Practical Journalist of the Year in 2020. One thing to know: this is a revision of a 2012 book published under her earlier name, Lucy Halsall — updated with newer cultivars, but not new work.
Where it was written
RHS-endorsed, UK timings and cultivars. A US edition exists — check the ISBN.
The facts
- AuthorLucy Chamberlain, with the RHS
- PublisherDK
- Published2020
- FormatHardback, 256 pages
- ISBN-13
9780241412411 - LevelBeginner to improver
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.