Flowers; Soil; Insects; Trees

Barrie Watts' photography is as inviting as ever in these four books, showing us familiar things and encouraging our further exploration of them. A fine example, in Trees, is his micrograph of the underside of a leaf: it looks like an Aran jersey. The rest of the book explains the tree as a botanic and as an ecological entity and ends by hoping we will look after existing trees and plant new ones.

Soil recommends further stewardship of mother Earth, its constituents and its population. Flowers goes from buds to seeds, explaining the purpose of colour and scent but remembering those which have little of either and inviting the growing of wild flowers on bare patches. And to the flowers come the Insects whose variety is well displayed, the sight of a mosquito bloating its belly on human blood almost compensating for an absence of water-dwellers.

Each book contains plenty of starting points for things to do. Rarely does one find environmental responsibility - often the object of mere lip-service in such books - so ingrained in the whole opus as it is here.