A Year Full of Flowers
Gardening for all seasons
Sarah Raven, photography by Jonathan Buckley · Bloomsbury, 2021
It looks like a coffee-table book and is actually a practical handbook. Every month ends in a task list, and the variety recommendations come from decades of side-by-side trials.
Sarah Raven commercially sells many of the varieties she recommends in this book. The recommendations are genuinely trialled and we think they're defensible — but you should know the commercial overlap exists before you order the seed.
What's actually in it
- Organised month by month, but with January/February and November/December combined — so ten chapters, not twelve.
- Each month follows the same pattern: the garden at Perch Hill that month; featured plants with performance notes from her own trials; illustrated "best of" cultivar recommendations across bulbs, annuals, biennials and perennials; and a practical to-do list.
- Recurring across the year: tulips (including which actually perennialise), roses, dahlias, alliums, sweet peas and chrysanthemums.
- Substantial content on conditioning cut flowers — a Perch Hill speciality.
What it actually says
Specifics from inside the book — so you can judge whether it's telling you anything you don't already know.
- Ten chapters, not twelve. January and February share one, November and December another — a ten-"month" year, each with a garden narrative, featured plants, a "best of" list of named cultivars, and a practical to-do list covering sowing, cuttings, feeding, staking and training.
- Named recommendations with reasons: tulip 'Ballerina', orange and lily-flowered, planted with purple alliums; salvias 'Hot Lips' and 'Amethyst Lips' for underplanting roses. Tulips lead April, roses June and July, dahlias September.
- Two techniques you won't find in most flower books: "chive tea" as a mildew preventative, and dogwood frames hung in trees holding fat and seed cylinders — the birds you attract then work on your slugs and snails.
- Flowers grouped by colour family — rich and brilliant, warm, soft and cool — with cut-flower conditioning advice running throughout, reflecting what Perch Hill is actually for.
Buy it if
You want flowers, you want them to keep coming, and you want to be told which specific varieties are worth the money.
Don't buy it if
Anyone growing edibles. No vegetables, no fruit, no trees, no shrubs beyond roses.
Where it falls short
Flowers only, and no house plants at all. Little on garden design or structure — this is about plants and seasons, not layout. Nothing on soil science or wildlife gardening. Nothing on container-only or balcony growing; Perch Hill is a working farm garden. At 1.16kg hardback it's also not a book you carry round the garden, which sits oddly with how practical it is.
Who wrote it
Raven took a history degree at Edinburgh and then trained as a doctor, practising medicine before leaving during a maternity break to start what she calls a kitchen-table business growing annuals and dahlias and running side-by-side variety trials. That trialling is what makes her recommendations worth having. She gardens at Perch Hill in East Sussex, which doubles as trials ground, course venue and photographic set. Christopher Lloyd described her as promoting "a more dynamic and showy style of gardening". State the obvious plainly: she owns a mail-order business selling bulbs, seeds and plants, and sells many of the varieties this book recommends. Tulip 'Ballerina', singled out in the book, is on her own site described as "an absolute must in my garden". The trials are real; so is the shop.
Where it was written
Perch Hill, East Sussex — mild, southern, relatively dry. Gardeners in Scotland, the north and upland sites will need to shift her monthly timings, sometimes by weeks. The book doesn't systematically address regional variation.
The facts
- AuthorSarah Raven, photography by Jonathan Buckley
- PublisherBloomsbury
- Published2021
- FormatHardback, 384 pages
- ISBN-13
9781526626110 - LevelBeginner to experienced
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.