GOOD in a Bed is a collection of writings by Ursula Buchan that have appeared in The Spectator over the last 17 years (John Murray £16.99).

Buchan is thoughtful and observant and brings a smile to the business of gardening. Though generally enthusiastic, she does point out happily that her husband and children are not keen gardeners, refers to "outdoor housework" and complains that "gardening can be tedious, a fact about which gardeners display a reticence which amounts to a conspiracy of silence".

In 1986, in "The Non Stick Wicket", she describes the "unhurried perfectionism" of the Trent Bridge groundsman; in 1999, she reflects on the quality of the turf churned by her local rugby club, the Northampton Saints, where "maintenance is mechanical", not chemical, and weeds are eradicated by slicing with a "slitter machine" twice a week.

The Garden Lovers' Guide to Britain by Kathryn Bradley-Hole is out in a new edition and looks a useful paperback for the traveller or weekend visitor (BBC £12.99). The author has a pedigree including Country Life, The Daily Telegraph and the BBC's Gardeners' World. Her "Worth a Visit in Winter" selection for Yorkshire includes the RHS gardens at Harlow Carr, Harrogate, and Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, near Ripon.

In her national "Six of the Best" concerning small gardens, two are in Northumberland.

Designer Plants is a difficult title, and is sometimes about "punctuation points". This is surprising from Sunniva Harte, as she has previously written on Zen gardens. I liked the photographs of standard trained wisterias and the Japanese cloud pruning of trees which keeps each branch separate and the same from year to year (New Holland £17.99).

In Gardens of Inspiration, editor Erica Hunnigher has asked 15 gardeners of distinction for their thoughts on the plot that has most inspired them, and has had said gardens photographed (BBC £25). This is gardening at the third remove and tends to the philosophical, and autobiographical, quite private. Nigel Colborn shows us round a Norfolk vicarage, Dan Pearson goes to Rome.

Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History takes us from chapter one on "Caves and Circles", via 500 pages, with plans, paintings and photographs, to the "Highway Commerce" of Kansas. Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, ex-administrator of New York's Central Park, has written a book strong, massive and global (Abrams £49.95).

In a chapter entitled "Paradise of Earth: The Islamic Garden", there is the story of Babur (1483-1530) who built a dazzling "water-laced" garden of fertility at Kabul for silken summer encampments. Muslims were masters of the outside as inside. They liked ponds and patios, "water, greenery and a lovely face". Though the tulip symbolises martyrdom, the rose is the flower par excellence of Islamic gardens, in sympathy with a million English borders.

"According to Muslim mystics, the rose was created from a drop of perspiration that fell from Muhammad's forehead."