It's great to hear that our biggest bookshop chain is actually making a profit again. Part of the reason must be because there are just so many gorgeous books coming out that can't be read on a machine - and so many have been written by women who really know their gardens. Here's my choice for this year's Christmas lists.

First up is Victoria Summerley's beautiful Great Gardens of London (Frances Lincoln) with photography by Hugo Rittson Thomas and Marianne Majerus.

Victoria has gone behind locked gates and found some gems most of us will never get the opportunity to see. Building on the success of her previous book, Secret Gardens of the Cotswolds (Frances Lincoln), Victoria explores the great and the good, gardens such as Winfield House, the US ambassador's brilliant space gardened by Stephen Crisp, the garden behind the black door of 10 Downing Street, as well as the quirky - the Downings Roads Floating Gardens, Bermondsey, and St Regis Close, Muswell Hill. 

Next on my list is Caroline Holmes's Water Lilies and Bory Latour-Marliac (Garden Art Press).

You may never have heard of this lily nurseryman but you will certainly know of his most famous client, Monet, and seen the result of his purchases whether in real life or in print. And it's thanks to Latour-Marliac that all of us are able to grow a wide variety of water lilies in our gardens in the United Kingdom thanks to his amazing breeding programme. Coincidentally I visited this nursery for the first time this summer and came away determined to add more water to my garden just so I can grow some of these exotic-looking treasures. Part history, part garden joy, Caroline's book is a love letter to this beautiful family of water plants.

These days when it's so easy to get practical advice from the web, it's hard for writers to come up with fresh and creative ideas for garden books. But I loved Louise Curley's The Crafted Garden (Frances Lincoln) with photographs by the brilliant award-winning Jason Ingram.

You know that feeling when you're in a garden or craft shop and see something and say, 'Why didn't I think of doing that?' Well, Louise has done it for you. And not only that, tells you simply how to do it. So many fab creative projects to do all the year round. Most of the materials can come from your garden - seedheads, cones, twigs, but Louise also includes a really comprehensive list of suppliers at the back for all those finishing touches. Perhaps a book to get for yourself before Christmas to help inspire with everything from wrappings to presents themselves.

The next book is written by one of my absolute favourite gardening writers, Mary Keen. Her latest book (and they are rare events) is very special: Paradise and Plenty. A Rothschild Family Garden (Pimpernel Press), about Eythrope, is, of course, about a world outside most of our imaginations. And yet it is also full of practical information on the running of a garden, any garden. You may never ever have a big garden or indeed a head gardener - but I defy you not to learn something from Sue Dickinson's perfectionism. Hopefully, I'll be curling up under the duvet with this inspirational book on Christmas morning.

Finally, a real luxury item, and not written by a gardening woman at all, but so what? It's present-buying time. Prolific author and mastermind behind the 'Chelsea Fringe' festival, Tim Richardson has produced the ultimate gift for any gardener with Oxonian connections - a lavish guide to Oxford College Gardens (Frances Lincoln) with photographs by Andrew Lawson. One can dream ...

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