My Garden World: the Sunday Times bestseller

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The book is insightful, personal, educational, amusing, inspiring, entertaining (is that enough adjectectives? Beautiful descriptions of all aspects of the natural world - landscapes, animals, birds, plants, insects, weather. Monty Don observes with detail the animals, birds and wildlife that come and go throughout the year, encouraging us to help and preserve the world around us.

I paid much more attention to their behaviour this year as I learnt what to expect on a monthly basis. I particularly enjoyed his heartfelt tribute to his beloved Nigel,So very moving and the book contains some lovely photos too. Love a bit of Monty - his encyclopedic knowledge of the countryside and it's inhabitants took me back to the days of Jack Hargreaves and "Out of town". Already 400 pages in paperback, I suppose a possibly 1,200 page doorstopper if pictures were included might not have been possible though.Wildlife is not something that we watch happening in remote and exotic parts of the world on our screens, but right here in our own back yards and the more that we encourage it and learn to live with it, the more rewarding it becomes.

Yet no other creature owns the sky more than the swift and they used to grace us with their supersonic, sleek version of the still ubiquitous swallows and martins.

My only criticism is I wish it had been purposefully written in a Tales and insight into his childhood, gardening and daily life were interesting in the most part but I did find certain parts of the book like trawling through an encyclopedia and it did tend to drag at those points. Recent times have given us the enforced opportunity to learn more about the fascinating natural world around us. If in our own modest back yards we can help preserve and treasure our natural world then we will make the world a better place - not just for ourselves but for every living creature". I'm not comfortable with his ambivalence about huntin' and shootin', but then I don't own a large estate in Shropshire and a farm on the Welsh hills.

It deals with the course of the natural year month by month, so is broken down into bite-sized chunks, which I like.Along with his home and garden in Long Meadow, there is a farm in Wales which provide endless opportunities to observe the comings and goings of plants and wildlife as the seasons change. I'm an avid watcher of Garden's World and while I like gardening, I know little about it which is why this book was ideal - I know perhaps I should read a boo about gardening.