Gardening for the Zombie Apocalypse
ISABEL LLOYD & phil CLARKE
(HEAD OF ZEUS, 220 PP, £14.99)
Tablet bookshop price £13.49 • Tel 020 7799 4064
Every generation has its defining gardening book. From the Second World War’s Digging for Victory by C.H. Middleton, to Percy Thrower’s 1970s Practical Gardening guides; from Geoff Hamilton’s 1987 Organic Gardening, to the millennium years of Carol Klein’s Plant Personalities. And now, perhaps, the strange, offbeat, fluorescent green Gardening for the Zombie Apocalypse could be a veg patch book for today.
Most gardening books offer a practical guide to successful cultivation of the soil. This one also presents a whole fictional world. The basic scenario is the end of civilisation – “When the Zombies start stumbling over the hill – and we all know they’re on their way – what’s the first weapon you should grab? A garden fork.” As civilisation breaks down, you’re on your own, and this book is a guide to how your veg patch will help you survive – once you’ve run out of looted goods.