Will be of invaluable use and inspiration to both beginners and experienced gardeners alike Contains intricate plans of informal, formal, small, urban, low-maintenance, and winter garden potagers The first book to look at growing vegetables for decorative effect as well as for culinary use Author is one of the world's leading experts on vegetables and vegetable growing Ideal for gardeners of all ages and with small, medium, or large gardens The first edition of this book sold 20,000 copies worldwide

"This is a wonderful book for winter reading, filled with ideas for spring and summer sowing and growing." Rosemary Verey The Sunday Times Book Supplement "Joy Larkcom has single-handedly put vegetable gardening back on the map" Jim Buckland Country Living "So filled with exciting and new things that - like the products of the author's kitchen - it goes down in one sitting." David Dunbar The Sunday Times "All aspects of creating an ornamental kitchen garden are covered, from planning to design ideas for attractive boundaries, paths, edges to beds, focal points, and features ... There's a wealth of beautifully photographed detail - textured effects, colourful touches, planting for dramatic effect - to get the creative juices flowing." Andrew Blackford Kitchen Garden "Creative Vegetable Gardening shows that veggies can be grown stylishly in the smallest of places" Jane Powers Irish Times

Joy Larkcom has been growing and writing about vegetables for more than thirty years and is considered one of the world's leading experts in the field. Her work has been deeply influenced by travels in Europe, China, Japan, the USA, and Canada, continually searching for new edible plants and cultivation techniques. With the help of her husband, Don Pollard, this has led to the introduction of many exciting salad plants and oriental vegetables. Her eloquent and humorous style of writing has done much to popularize vegetable growing. Over the past ten years she has concentrated on the "potager" concept, making the kitchen plot a beautiful feature in itself. She created four small potagers in the experimental organic market garden she and her husband ran for many years in Suffolk, before moving to Southern Ireland, where a fan-shaped potager is now being made on a windswept slope. Joy is well-known as an author, journalist, and lecturer, and has taken part in many radio and television broadcasts. Her other books include Oriental Vegetables (1991), Salads for Small Gardens (1995), The Organic Salad Garden (2001), Grow Your Own Vegetables (2002), and revisions of the classic The Vegetable Garden Displayed. Joy has won the Garden Writer of the Year award three times and in 1993 was awarded the prestigious Veitch Memorial Medal for services to horticulture. In 2003 she was presented with the Garden Writers' Guild Lifetime Achievement award. She lives in Cork, Ireland.

1 THE MAGIC IN VEGETABLE GARDENING, Starting at home, What is a potager? The threads of inspiration, Contemporary approaches, The home of the edible landscape, Ecstasy or anguish?; 2 ELEMENTS OF DESIGN, Getting started - The site; The style; Drawing up the plan, Plan of a formal potager, Plan of an informal potager, Plan of a small, urban potager, Plan of a low-maintenance potager, Plan of a winter potager, Patterns and bed shapes - Squares, Diamonds and triangles, Circles, Unconventional patterns, Minimal patterns, Boundaries - Man-made, Hedges, Instant boundaries, Paths - Soft paths, Mulched paths, Hard surfaces, Edges - Hard edges, Dwarf hedges, Focal points and features - Arches, Seats and arbours, Standard trees, Topiary, Supports, Containers; 3 DRAMATIC EFFECTS Planting for effect, Architectural and dramatic plants, Drama from seedheads and flowering vegetables, Climbers - Culinary climbers, Mixing climbing flowers and shrubs with vegetables, Living edges - Frivolous edges, Useful edges Ground cover - Types of ground-cover plants, Special effects with ground cover Textured effects - Plants with form and texture Colourful touches - Vegetables and herbs, Flowering edibles and edible flowers, Intermingling annuals, Mixing bulbs with edibles, Vegetables in the flower beds, Intercropping - The patterns, Practicalities, Options for intercropping, Contrasting colours, Contrasting heights, Contrasting textures, Seedling patches - Suitable crops, Sowing and growing, Effects with cca seedlings; 4 FRUIT AS A DECORATIVE FEATURE Using fruit creatively - Shapely and colourful trees, Fruit in containers, Integrating fruit into the garden, Selecting fruit, Fruit as a framework - Trained fruit on boundaries, Trained fruit forms, Climbers and trailers on the boundary, Using Fruit for ornamental highlights - Arches, Tunnels and walkways, Columnar effects; 5 POTAGER MANAGEMENT Soil fertility - Green manuring, Mulching, Watering Raising good quality plants - Direct sowing, Sowing in seedbeds, Raising plants 'indoors', Keeping order, Controlling pests and diseases, Plant protection, Forcing pots, Planning for succession, 6 A-Z DIRECTORY Table of common and botanical names, Brassicas, Salad and leafy vegetables, Roots, bulbs, tubers and swollen stems, Podded vegetables, Fruiting and seeding vegetables, Gourds and squashes, Perennials, Herbs, Edible flowers, Glossary, Seasons, Further reading, Suppliers, Index, Acknowledgements, Photo acknowledgements.