Just because the nights are longer and the days are colder, please do not take your eyes off your little garden plot and give up. This is when the real pleasure of a bubbling veggie soup on the stove can lift spirits, especially if you’ve cut the needed herbs from your own garden. Need inspiration? Sunday’s Garden: Growing Heide is a pleasing place to start.

Sunday Reed worked on her plot of land for years, harvesting food for her kitchen and creating splashes of colour under trees and rejoicing in the comradeship created by friends gardening together. The gift she has left all of us is a garden for life. This wonderful book has recipes in it, but not for food, not for immediate menus but for roses, and for fruit trees and for history.

This book is an ode to Heide and is filled with absolutely delicious interviews with friends, gardeners, historians and art critics and their photos. It is the perfect slice of what makes Melbourne the place to be.

[[chris]] Christine Gordon is the Events Coordinator for Readings and is a committee member of