I have the great privilege of owning many books – and some of them are absolute corkers. This post is intended to capture my “top books”, much like Radio 4’s “Five Foot Shelf” and will expand, well, as and when I get to it.

Creating a Forest Garden, by Martin Crawford

Forest gardening, or agroforestry, is essentially using the concepts seen in nature of multilayered growing (from underground to the high canopy, and everything in between) and applying it to garden / land design. I’ve loved the idea since discovering it and Martin’s book is an absolute gem. Fabulous to read as a book, an excellent reference, it’s laid out clearly and simply but is an absolute mine of information. This is one of those “I don’t lend it out – but I do buy people copies” books – if you enjoy plants, trees and / or gardening this is an excellent resource.

Scripts People Live, by Claude Steiner

A prior knowledge of Transactional Analysis concepts (Being Human, by Gerry Pyves, is a good place to start) is definitely a help with this book. I’ve benefited both from reading TA materials and a year on Gerry’s psycho-educational programme, The Knowledge, which definitely made reading this particular tome more informative. It took my TA understanding deeper and offered some great nuggets and insights into being human – many of which are accessible regardless of your prior TA knowledge. There are chunks of the book which will be of particular interest to students of psychotherapy and counselling as they explore patterns of behaviours and tools to utilise, but overall this is a book I’ll come back to for a really solid TA refresher.