Pick of the picture books

The International Garden Photographer of the Year awards were announced two weeks ago in Kew, launching a massive exhibition that will run until September at the Royal Botanic Gardens. Garden Photographer of the Year (AA Publishing, £25) contains all the images from that exhibition, as well as those commended by the judges, making a total of 224 pages of beautiful, impressive and astonishing photographs. Category winners include Colin Roberts's haunting and painterly "Ash Tree on the Downs", Andrew Bailey's "Tug of War" (for which extra credit should go to the earthworm and the robin who posed for the picture) and "Marguerites in the Rain", by Chinch Gryniewicz, which won in the Plant Portraits category and is probably what we can expect to see in Britain this summer.