This delightful and timely book is the author’s solution to soaring food prices. Simply grow your own food garden, starting with one square metre of soil. Houbein includes designs and instructions for more than 30 different one-square-metre plots, including salad, soup, pizza and anti-oxidant plots. There are other books, like Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, that follow a similar theme, but One Magic Square is Australian and written for Australian conditions. With chapters describing the vegetables, fruit and herbs that can be grown, as well as sections on compost, pests, mulch and seeds, there is everything included that anyone would need to start growing their own food in temperate Australia. The author is passionate about her subject and while she has produced a book full of wit and wisdom with gems of information—like placing a tile under a developing pumpkin to prevent rot—her chatty, rambling style, with repetition, can make it hard to find something specific. A shorter, cheaper book would have wider appeal. However, it will arrive in the market at exactly the right time and will appeal to both gardeners and non-gardeners, encouraging them to take the first step to growing their own nutritious, organic food.

Penny Woodward is a freelance garden writer and photographer

Tags: lolo houbein