Move over Annabel Langbein and Barbara Kingsolver, here comes Fionna Hill! A Green granny's garden: a year of the good life in Grey Lynn is a charming, readable book by Fionna Hill subtitled The confessions of a novice urban gardener. Covering similar territory to the big names mentioned above: produce from the garden to the table, month by month descriptions of planting and harvesting, and comments on the benefits of locally grown food, Fionna Hill writes however with a refreshing realism about her venture. We hear about her gardening problems and failures; we hear about the differences in her approach to the idealist organic ethos and we hear about far more gardens than her little patch in Grey Lynn.
Ooooby (Out of our own backyard) is an organisation connecting growers and eaters in communities. Fionna Hill took her microgreens to exchange there but didn't have many takers, but that's another story. I loved this book for its gardening and cooking tips, its wry comments on people and society and isms and its personalised information. I just wish that it had an index so that I can quickly find again the recipes for preserved green figs and pickled olives; my post-it notes keep dropping out of the well turned pages.
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