At the moment I am busy writing diaries based on my ten-minute gardener column that usually appears on the back of a certain daily newspaper. There are three of them, on fruit, flowers and vegetables and I’m running through the year. Writing about spring, summer and autumn is making me highly twitchy as I sit in my study gazing longingly at the frosty wasteland that should be my garden. I feel even more stir crazy than usual, especially when I’m writing about bees, butterflies and strawberries.

I’ve done the seed catalogues (to alleviate the boredom) and Mr Fothergill’s is first-rate for its pictures and clear layout, particularly so for vegetables. (tel 0845 371 0518/www.mr-fothergills.co.uk) But I’m missing the bees and butterflies more than usual and the arrival of a new book, Gardening for Butterflies, Bees and other beneficial insects, by Jan Miller-Klein, has made my longing for summer worse (£19.95, bookshops or www.7wells.co.uk. Also see A Good Read).

This large softback book simplifies the art of butterfly watching by clear drawings showing their shape and distinguishing features. Common Blues have orange on their underwing and Holly Blues do not, for instance. Jan’s next section deals with the seasons, and butterflies are teamed with the plants they seek out. We are shown how to grow these plants. Butterfly flowers are nectar-rich and nearly always attract bees too. But flowers are only part of the picture: there’s an informative section on food plants and if you want to create a butterfly garden these are vital. There are also three butterfly gardens with planting plans.

Jan also deals with natural pest control and lists predatory insects and what they feed on. The section on ladybirds features seven species commonly found in gardens and there is also a section on solitary bees that you may see in your garden. The large photographs and the clear way this book is laid out would appeal to every age group and informing the young is vital. They may not realise how insect life has declined over the last four decades. But the clear layout makes this book look deceptively simple. Don’t dismiss it. All the information is there. How many of you knew there was Harebell Bee, for instance. Many of the bee pictures were taken by Marc Carlton in his London garden (www.foxleas.com), so wildlife gardening is highly possible in a city.

There are three book prizes awarded by the Garden Media Guild and this year’s Practical Book of the Year is The Kew Plant Glossary, an illustrated dictionary of plant identification terms by Henk Beentje, published by Kew Publishing. This paperback book that tells you what those long words botanists love to use really mean. Words like palmatipartite (lobed and hand-shaped, the lobes occupying half the leaf) are illustrated with a helpful diagram by the side.

This book will be useful to those who regularly need to read a plant book written by a botanist. However, sheer botanical terms somehow do not capture a plant’s magic. My all-time favourite description, by Bob Brown of Cotswold Garden Plants, is “Barbara Cartland with running mascara, leaning slightly”. This describes a bright-pink oriental poppy called ‘Raspberry Queen’. I can’t even begin to use any of these long words to pin ‘Barbara’ down in the glossary. Heigh ho.