The Food Lover's Garden

“Makes growing your own into a swashbuckling and delicious adventure—where you travel the world and taste its finest fruits in your own backyard.”

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, founder of River Cottage and author of The River Cottage Cookbook

For the food-loving gardener, Mark Diacono has a new mantra: Life is too short to grow ordinary food. Head gardener at the famed River Cottage, Diacono wants us all to stop growing onions, potatoes, and carrots, because it’s just as easy to cultivate mouthwatering delights such as Chilean guava, kai lan, daylilies, Japanese wineberries and Szechuan pepper. In The Food Lover’s Garden he shows how easy it can be to reap extraordinary flavor.

Selected for their deliciousness and ease of growing, the fruits and vegetables in the book come with straightforward gardening advice and detailed information on how and when to harvest. Preparation suggestions plus fifty recipes, such as sweet Blue Honeysuckle Pancakes, stunning and delicate Daylily Fritters, and a rich, double cream Cardoon Gratin, teach readers how to showcase the unusual ingredients in their home cooking.

Brimming with practical advice for growing and enjoying 39 of the most remarkable fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices, and flowers, The Food Lover’s Garden is a sumptuous and lyrical invitation to garden, eat, and live more adventurously.