The Natural History of the Garden by Colin Spedding and Geoffrey Spedding (Yimber Press, £17.99)

There are 46 species of aphid in a typical British garden. Snails have up to 15,000 teeth. A foxglove can contain as many as 750,000 seeds.

It's nuggets of information like this that make Colin Spedding's nature book a wonderful read.

He first began compiling it in 1996, after a visit to his garden by children from the school that neighbours his land.

What they saw and what they asked spurred him on to take a much closer look at the natural history of his plot which until then, he had simply taken for granted.

If you want to attract wildlife onto your patch of ground, or recognise the signs that can tell you just what is burrowing and scuttling about in the undergrowth, this is here to help.

Sir Colin Spedding is the retired Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Professor of agricultural systems at Reading University and helping him in his personal voyage of discovery is his son, Dr Geoffrey Spedding with a section devoted to American eco-systems and his daughter Lucy Weston, who has contributed to a chapter which focuses wholly on creating gardens for children.

If you want to know how to attract goldfinches or green woodpeckers to your garden; understand why spiders shouldn't be stamped upon or simply enjoy what Mother Nature has to offer then this is a glorious textbook.

It is accompanied by simple drawings covering a wide spectrum of subjects, from the typical position of a crow's nest to the alimentary tract of a cockroach.

Fascinating stuff.

David Chapman