Last-minute love: The Untamed Garden by Sonia Day

This sexy little book comes in a plain, brown wrapper

There's still time to captivate your Valentine between the covers – the covers of a new little pillow book,  The Untamed Garden: A revealing look at our love affair with plants.

Sonia Day's newest book looks at our relationship to plants. But thine own true love needn't be a gardener to, well, love it. This is one of those rare crossovers that will appeal as much to gardeners as to those who prefer their nature more in the human line.

Let's face it. Life depends on sex aka procreation, and, like everything else on Earth, it all begins with plants. Plants capture the sun's power and turn it into food energy and oxygen. So our very existence depends not only on how well plants get on, but how well they get it on.

Gorgeous graphics, illustrations and photographs make The Untamed Garden a pleasure to look at

Day's lively, lusty prose gives us peep inside the botanical boudoir. Chapter by chapter, she takes us from Innocence and Flirtation through Rapture and Devotion, illustrating the ingenious wiles plants use to seduce bugs and beasts into joining their procreative action. Along the way, this well-researched little book also lets us glimpse the passions, obsessions and titillations that plants have inspired in humankind throughout history.

Never mind fig leaves; you might never view a fig the same way again.

It's a fun little Valentine to enjoy reading, preferably alone together, all year, and even comes with recipes for love potions. That sure beats a box of chocolates. And might even help you burn some calories.

Lovely little books like this are why print publications will continue to inspire undying devotion

Apparently I Need a Southern Gentleman

Berries in the snow, just what the doctor ordered.

No, I'm not advertising for a mate with a charming drawl. It's only me letting out an inner "D'oh!" after a spot of Googling.

It's all to do with winter interest in the garden, or lack thereof, in my own. Four years ago, determined to get serious about eradicating the dreariness of my winter landscape, I planted a Winterberry shrub, Ilex Verticillata "Winter Red".

A specimen at the Toronto Botanical Gardens inspired me to plant one of these hardy deciduous hollies that sports spectacular red berries in winter.

 I also picked up a male pollinator, "Jim Dandy", as hollies need a male and a female to make berries. To my dismay, years went by with a berry count of zero, nothing, nada. I waited, thinking maybe it takes time for the magic to happen. But this year, with no berries again, I began to wonder, how long does it take before you see berries, perhaps I planted the pollinating fellow too far away? In general, what gives?

Well, turns out that compatibility really counts in the plant world. Today's googling told me that I brought home Mr. Wrong for Ms. Winter Red. What I needed for her temperament was an Ilex "Southern Gentleman". And no, the original tag didn't have this info. So, all these years Red's been ignoring the phone calls, avoiding the approach, and crossing the street whenever hopeful "Jim Dandy" came wafting by. Sigh. A match never meant to be. And now I can't wait to install a new shrub in my spring garden; Ms Red's waited long enough for her "Southern Gentleman".