My only disappointment with this book is its geography.

Gerard E. Cheshire's Garden Wildlife: Revealing Your Garden's Secrets, newly published by Pen & Sword, provides a wealth of information about the life -- bird, beast, insect and plant -- that might be found in the typical garden. Unfortunately for me, it focuses on the British garden -- which makes sense, Pen & Sword is after all a British publisher -- but it makes the book less useful to someone like me, whose garden is firmly situated in south-central Pennsylvania.

Even so, it is an interesting read. Without going into too much detail, Cheshire provides a rundown of the mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates and, of course, plants that are likely to be found in an English garden. (The book focuses on what might appear naturally in a garden setting, not what the gardener might place there intentionally.) It's informative, and provides useful knowledge about how the residents of a garden environment interact.

Of course, one purpose of the book is to encourage biodiversity in urban and suburban landscapes, rather than to cultivate a highly regimented or controlled environment where native species fail to thrive. In that respect, this book is an invaluable resource -- gardens should be havens for wildlife, not sterile settings where only the gardener's chosen blooms survive.

The book is concise, providing an overview of the species rather than a detailed examination of each. I would love to see this resource duplicated for other, non-British regions of the world.