The best coffee table books to buy now

Sometimes a book is published at exactly the right moment. Written by House & Garden’s garden editor Clare Foster with photographs by Andrew Montgomery, Pastoral Gardens carefully and tenderly draws together deeply felt ideas about gardening at this daunting time of climate change and habitat loss – and offers a myriad of exhilarating ways forward. It is a serious and thoughtful book, but beautiful and practical, too. The range of gardens explored is a complete delight. There are some that were already familiar to me, such as Julian and Isabel Bannerman's romantic creation at Ashington Manor Farm in Somerset, or the airy, explosive Walled Garden at West Sussex estate Knepp. And there are gardens I did not know at all – in Düsseldorf, Virginia and Nottingham. Clare’s conversations with their makers have a rare, intimate quality that is particularly generous and inspiring. Non Morris

How did an infamous industrialist branded as ‘the most hated man in America’ come to bequeath his home and his art collection to the public? This is the question that Ian Wardropper, the outgoing director of The Frick Collection, sets out to answer. He explores the life and work of Henry Clay Frick and his daughter Helen, whose pursuit and acquisition of some of the finest works of European art – paintings, sculpture and decorative arts – led to the formation of the revered New York museum. From Henry’s collaborations with dealers and decorators to Helen’s devotion to patronage and philanthropy, it is a story that paints a colourful picture of this period of history.

At a quick glance, the latest book by gardener and ceramicist Frances Palmer reads as a sort of almanac of what grows in her Connecticut garden. But in her hands, this book leaves almanac territory quickly, as it is not just a recitation of favourite varieties. Instead, it is a vivid exploration of what she grows and why – an intellectual romp through her garden beds. It is arranged by the six periods of growth according to a botanical calendar, not the four seasons, so we are part of an elevated understanding, picking up her rhythm and pace. Frances is a gentle powerhouse, her knowledge and experience vast. Yet this reads in the most charming and accessible way. The reader can feel what she often says, ‘I send my flowers out into the world with intention.’ Lucky us. A feast. Anne Hardy

New English Interiors is a 250-page snapshot of a particular (and particularly appealing) style of English decorating – one in which the rooms are layered and textured, colours are strong and patterns playful. The shelves are lined with books and the mantelpieces laden with treasures and oddities; there is a mixture of high art and folk art. It is the way so many of us want to live. Its writer and mastermind is House & Garden features director Elizabeth Metcalfe, who writes in the introduction about ‘a certain eccentricity’ that is also associated with the style. She promises that the 22 houses she has included are ’deeply personal... a visual feast’. They certainly are. Each chapter opens with a striking portrait of the homeowner, which sets the scene perfectly for the stories Lizzie goes on to tell. You get the sense she knows her subjects well and that the interiors she has chosen to feature appeal to her personally. It gives this book an intimate and pleasingly authentic feel. David Nicholls

If anyone can be credited with changing the way that we use antiques, it is Christopher Gibbs – dealer, collector, aesthete and writer. Expelled from Eton for shady dealings, he took an equally rule-breaking approach to objects: juxtaposing eras and scale for what Rupert Thomas, former editor of The World of Interiors calls, in the preface to this vivid biography, ‘a maverick grandeur that has been copied but never equalled’. To call him a ‘tastemaker’ is to underplay his scholarship. With his gimlet eye for the misattributed, Christopher made important discoveries: a Hans Holbein, or the Giovanni di Paolo now in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. At home, his taste was for ‘the splendid with the modest’: Moorish silks and stained glass at Davington Priory (which he sold to Bob Geldof); bookcases from Oxford University and wallpaper in designs by his spiritual hero William Morris at his ancestral home, Clifton Hampden in Oxfordshire. At El Foolk in Tangier, where he died in 2018, heirlooms mingled with a Brancusi-like marble, Chinese porcelain and Saharan rugs. The boy who pressed his ‘rosy snout’ to the windows of antique shops never lost his taste for the unusual – and resonant. Serena Fokschaner

Repurposing old materials makes economic and ecological sense. But what Adam Hills and Maria Speake, co-founders of the London-based salvage and design firm Retrouvius, have also done is to make reclamation chic and modern. They gave us the museum cabinet as kitchen island; the chunky iroko wood worktop salvaged from a science lab. Adam and Maria met as architectural students in Glasgow. In the early 1990s, as congregations dwindled, scores of ecclesiastical buildings were succumbing to the wrecker’s ball. Appalled at the destruction, the couple set out to save their architectural treasures. Word spread and, in 1993, Retrouvius began. Their interiors projects convey a knack for reuse in settings that span a Bayswater apartment and a Hebridean bolthole. Fossil-embedded limestone from Heathrow and sea-green copper from a 1970s office building add patina. What strikes you most is their ingenuity: old cigar moulds inset into a door like an abstract relief. In Retrouvius’s world, resourcefulness – not newness – is all. Serena Fokschaner

Our planet is in peril. Faced with dwindling biodiversity and the often catastrophic consequences of our changing climate, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But, in this book, landscape architect Marian Boswall offers hope for the future through regenerative gardening. Accessible but never dumbed down, the book gives a clear introduction to the key elements of this practice: soil, water, ecosystems, materials, energy and planting. It suggests simple projects that will make an immediate difference in your garden, and presents charts, tables and reading lists for further study. Marian talks about learning to love dung beetles and spiders, harvesting grey water and using a bokashi bin to compost food. She also acknowledges the importance of making a garden beautiful, and slowing down long enough to enjoy it. Jodie Jones

Thoughtful is the word that comes to mind when reading this book about the interior design of Nicole Salvesen and Mary Graham. This is no soft, pensive elegy, but a bright, revelatory ‘modern expression of classic English decorating’ by two designers who constantly study its minute details. The pair work to adapt its lovely legacy for life today, when such back-of-house spaces as pantries, boot rooms and cloakrooms are given almost as much attention as the drawing room. Nine projects are examined in depth, from a grand country house to a London pied-à-terre and US mountain retreat. Elfreda Pownall

An exciting new cohort of Australian designers has emerged in recent years. David Flack is one of those, his rather spirited yet laid-back aesthetic mirroring the continent’s economic flowering. David set up his own interiors practice in 2014 and, since then, his output has been prodigious – from beach houses and Melbourne terraces to Sydney’s Ace Hotel. He encourages clients to ‘go bold’ and it shows. To be ‘Flacked’ is to succumb to an immersive palette of colour, texture and form: be it a Milan-meets-Mexico marble and copper kitchen, a walnut-lined reading nook, or plaster walls that are as red as the Outback earth. It all feels very modern. And very Australian. Serena Fokschaner

This beautiful book marks the centenary of the Swedish brand Svenskt Tenn and it explores the singular vision of its founder Estrid Ericson: entrepreneur, tastemaker and – as House & Garden put it in 1939 – ‘the Mistress of Modern’. The book traces the evolution of the company from a pewter shop to an international design beacon, shaped as much by Estrid’s often understated creative force as by designer Josef Frank’s exuberant sense of colour. Thoughtfully edited by Nina Stritzler-Levine and designed by Irma Boom, this book is both a celebration and a richly layered study of one of the most iconic brands in 20th-century design. Marco Mansi

If you’re an admirer of the contemporary country house look, you may well be very familiar with Sims Hilditch’s work. The nine projects featured in this book demonstrate studio founder Emma Sims-Hilditch’s impressive ability to blend timeless charm with 21st-century functionality. Expansive rural newbuilds and restorations stand out not only for their elegant drawing rooms and bedrooms, but also for the practical yet thoughtfully detailed back-of-house spaces. Londoners especially will find inspiration in the clever remodelling of a Victorian townhouse and the chic decoration of a flat in The OWO building on Whitehall. You can see an unusual Warwickshire project featured in the book here.

Located near Stamford in Lincolnshire, Burghley House was mostly created for 1st Lord Burghley, William Cecil (1520-1598), who was Elizabeth I’s chief adviser. This beautiful new book on the property reveals it as one of the great treasure houses. Through these pages, Burghley House, with its extraordinary roofscape, rises like a vision of 16th-century Spenserian England, a lively expression of the influence of Italian Renaissance details conveyed through France. Its exceptional, palatial Baroque interiors were created later for the well-travelled John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter (1648-1700) and his countess Anne (1649-1703), who collected art from across Europe. The master landscape architect Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown transformed its grounds in the 18th century and made additions, including new stables, a greenhouse and a banqueting house for Brownlow Cecil, 9th Earl of Exeter (1725-1793), who also completed several of the interiors. John Martin Robinson’s book, with magnificent photographs by Ashley Hicks, is the ideal guide to understanding the house’s rich and complex story. Jeremy Musson

This is more than a history of England’s first school of interior decoration, which has produced countless notable alumni whose work often appears in this magazine. Jacqueline Duncan, the esteemed founder of Inchbald, sweeps the reader on a Grand Tour of design, weaving in history, politics, economics, geography, architecture and religion with a masterful and delicate touch. She charts the rise of feminism (confirming that design offered women a bridge out of domesticity or secretarial work), the business of design, the birth of modern Britain and the slow fading of the light of an age when aristocracy, lineage and patronage defined the social, political and physical landscape. It has been more than 20 years since my husband Staffan and I studied at the Inchbald and subsequently founded Tollgard Studio, but reading this book has made us yearn for another round of design education. Simply, nobody does it better. Monique Tollgard

That Nicola Harding describes the creation of a home as a kind of alchemy – an enchanting and near supernatural process of transformation – speaks to the numinous nature of the interior designer’s approach to decoration. Unlike the ancient philosophers, Nicola is happy to share her secret ingredient in this new monograph, explaining, ‘In my pursuit of spaces that are soulful, and hold and move us, colour is indispensable.’ This exploration of her philosophy and practice features stunning photographs of her projects – from a Tuscan villa to a Georgian house in the English countryside. The book also reveals Nicola’s admirable intellectual humility, which allowed her to not only absorb the expertise of mentors in her early career, but also maintain a deep curiosity about her craft. It is a quality that has, over time, transmuted into a formidable authority with which she dispenses, in a disarming and warm tone, valuable advice on how to ‘unlock the soulfulness’ of a home. Aida Amoako