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Creating a garden is always a challenge ' but a pleasant one' and to help you meet that challenge is 'Design & Planting' the latest guide in the Hillier Gardener's Guide series. In yet another informative and useful book, author Andrew McIndoe tells you what to consider from the beginning and throughout a garden's development.

Andrew has designed the Hillier garden for the Chelsea Flower Show exhibit since 1989 with an unbroken record of gold medals. He has been creating numerous show gardens and real gardens for more than 30 years and in "Design and Planting' brings his wealth of experience to gardeners everywhere.

As with all the guides in this excellent series, 'Design & Planting' is printed in an easy format, with just the right amount of information balanced with great photographs. Andrew comments in the introduction to the book that today there is more variety in the style and content of gardens than ever before. "The creation of a garden involves not only plants", explains Andrew, "but also hard landscaping materials, such as timber and paving, water, furniture, pots, lighting and an extensive portfolio of ornaments and accessories."

All gardeners are involved in some form of design and planning at some stage with their gardens although most gardens at the outset may not have a definite design but evolve through time.

In 'Design & Planting' you can follow through from the planning process, with ideas for shapes of planting areas, adapting an existing garden and aspects such as privacy and concealment, to features such as hard surfaces, water and garden structures. In the planting section Andrew takes you through the basis behind good planting, architectural plants, colour and a wide range of information on shrubs for structure, trees, and colourful foilage.

Particularly useful I found are the sections on 'good companions‚' giving ideas on what plants will happily partner other plants. The section on situations‚ is also useful because it takes you through situations such as sloping sites, coastal gardens and narrow spaces etc.