 as we enter late summer, that new and fashionable "fifth season" in British horticulture, the garden is decorously winding down and it's a good time to start thinking creatively about our plots. an exciting crop of summer books is out, tempting us towards new departures and beginnings. Here is a selection of the best.  Landscapes in Landscapes  by Piet Oudolf with Noel Kingsbury  THaMES &amp; HUDSON, ?35  The white-haired, apple-cheeked giant of a Dutchman is credited with "revolutionising" British gardens since the mid-Nineties, causing us all to throw out our shrubs and replace them with grasses and swaying drifts of perennials.  It's not quite like that, of course, but there's no doubting the international prestige of the world's most celebrated contemporary planting designer, responsible for the elevated Highline park in Manhattan and a chunk of Chicago's Millennium Park. This catalogue of his most recent work has huge double-page photographs, comprehensive planting lists and an incisive, platitude-free text from Noel Kingsbury.  I rather liked the eccentricities of the design, such as the captions to plants rendered as matching colour tints, though cynics might snigger at the way each project is not given a name, just its size in square metres (Potters Field Park in London is given as "2,500m2"), as if to imply Oudolf can roll out his work like a fitted carpet. a rather singular publication, but an important one.  Great Gardens of Britain  by Helena attlee  FRaNCES LINCOLN, ?16.99  a surprisingly slim, medium-format volume, given the blockbuster subject, but perhaps that, and the low price for an illustrated book, is another symptom of these recessionary times. The book does not stint on quality, however. attlee's text is lively, accessible and just about informative enough for an undemanding canter through the horticultural highlights of Britain - all those usual suspects, such as Great Dixter, Sissinghurst, Wisley, Tresco and Powis Castle.  I'm not sure about some of the advice. For example, "don't go to Hidcote in a hurry". But it's good to see gardens such as Mount Stewart and Crathes Castle given their due - Crathes was favoured by Gertrude Jekyll of one generation and Graham Stuart Thomas of the next.  The emphasis is on horticultural extravaganzas, with the poor old English landscape garden represented by Stourhead alone. alex Ramsay's astutely composed photographs create constant variation. a bargain.  The Universe in the Landscape  by Charles Jencks  FRaNCES LINCOLN, ?40  It's back to the blockbuster with this stupendous volume, which it appears has been designed and packaged up by the "landscape starchitect" himself, replete as it is with working drawings, graphs, computer models and, of course, astonishing images of the finished "cosmological" landforms which are his speciality. Recent projects such as the soon-to-be-completed Parco Portello in Milan and the landform for the CERN scientific institute in Geneva are presented in detail. and what are we to make of the plan to create a gigantic landform of a naked woman in Northumberland?  Everything is "content-driven", which means everything needs to be explained (at length). It's an overrich mix in many ways, but the book is leavened by frequent bursts of self-deprecating humour, such as the typing skeleton Jencks has inserted into his own garden, and the story of his exploding sculpture at Clare College, Cambridge, which triggered a terrorist alert.  The finale is an investigation into ancient sites on Orkney and elsewhere, an exciting new source of inspiration.  Gertrude Jekyll and the Country House Garden  by Judith B Tankard  aURUM PRESS, ?30  The author has been the doyenne of "Saint Gertrude" studies for some years and this handsome volume is a fine summation of her work to date (as well as Jekyll's, of course). It does not illustrate all of the gardens - that would be a multi-volume publication - but it does show off the best, including Hestercombe, Deanery Gardens and Folly Farm, using photographs drawn exclusively from the Country Life picture library.  These are complemented by new photographs of Jekyll gardens that have been restored in the right spirit; images of The Manor House, Upton Grey, and Jekyll's own Munstead Wood triumphantly justify inclusion. a decision to devote an early chapter to those old, sequestered gardens which Jekyll visited and wrote up for Country Life is intriguing and justifiable, since it throws light on the kind of tone she was aiming at in her own designs.  There have been several books on Jekyll over the years but this is certainly the most attractive yet.  Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City  by Dan Pearson  CONRaN OCTOPUS, ?28  This is an exceptionally elegant production, as one would expect from this designer and the photographer Howard Sooley (who was responsible for the great garden book of the past quarter century: Derek Jarman's Garden).  Seasonally arranged in intense, bite-sized essays, it chronicles the garden Pearson made over a decade behind his tall Victorian terrace house in south London. If plants are your thing, this is the book for you, as it's almost exclusively concerned with plant-talk.  While browsing in a bookshop, turn to page 126 and read the threepage disquisition on epimediums, those most connoisseurial of subjects. If you are in heaven, buy the book; if not, you can always judge it by the exquisite pictures (though I hope that publishing some of them at postage-stamp size does not catch on).  The book is not overly rarefied, however, and I greatly enjoyed some of Pearson's tactile, sensuous writing, such as the section on Hamamelis, with the buds of 'Jelena' described as "super matte and a velvety cinnamon brown".  Contemporary Colour in the Garden  by andrew Wilson  TIMBER PRESS, ?20  Colour has been rather neglected as a topic by garden writers over the past decade, made unfashionable by the prescriptions of the "New Perennials" movement, which sought to persuade us that form and structure are the most important elements of planting design. Colour can always sort itself out, they said.  Well, colour is back, at least to judge by this thoughtful publication from one of the country's leading garden-design tutors. Ostensibly it is a picture-driven book, filled with striking images of colourful garden scenes, with plants and "hard materials" playing off each other. The accompanying text will provide food for thought for professional designers and serious amateurs alike (the rest of us, on the other hand, might think, "That's nice," before resuming the weeding).  Killer picture: Ivan Hicks's brick-and-rock-stuffed gabions at the sadly defunct Future Gardens show, a veritable gateau of colourful rubble.  Gardening in a Changing Climate  by ambra Edwards  aQUaMaRINE BOOKS, ?14.99  We are often exhorted to garden in a "Mediterranean" manner in order to accommodate climate change, but it has taken several years for the penny to drop that Great Britain is not actually in the Mediterranean, so the style may be inappropriate.  Edwards's new book takes this sensible line by using the Mediterranean look as a starting point only, encouraging us to try gravel gardens, jungle gardens and even a dry riverbed theme (I'm not sure that one will catch on). The basic idea is that we should make it up as we go along, in timehonoured horticultural fashion.  Speaking of fashion, there is even a recipe for a "summer cactus bed", something rarely seen outside botanical gardens nowadays. Will cacti make a comeback? The book is well laid-out, clearly written and does not overburden the reader with long lists of useful plants. Instead, a mini catalogue is provided at the end, making it ideal for the average gardener who thinks it might be time for a change of direction.  Vauxhall Gardens: a History  by David Coke and alan Borg  YaLE UNIVERSITY PRESS, ?55  The celebrated pleasure gardens at Vauxhall, just south of the river in central London, are long gone, but the story has always attracted historians. The fact that Vauxhall was essentially the first public art gallery and nursery of the Rococo style in Britain has been well attested by other writers, as has the startling mix of social classes who mingled there - dukes and ne'erdo-wells cheek by jowl.  Despite the competition, this sumptuous new volume has to be considered the definitive history to date. The authors go into every aspect of the 200-year-old life of this extraordinary open-air fun park, art gallery, concert hall, restaurant and (at times) brothel. We learn about its entrepreneurial owner Jonathan Tyers, while scores of illustrations and new ground plans bring the site to life as never before.  Twilight Garden  by Lia Leendertz  PaVILION, ?20  a beguiling book on a topic of apparently dubious practical interest - the fact that many of us like our gardens best as night begins to fall.  Leendertz takes this one step further by exhorting us to create a "twilight garden" specifically designed to be enjoyed when the owner returns home from work, or has finally packed the children off to bed - "a Gloom of One's Own"? The author recommends whites, blues and purples as the best night blooms, and lists those that have the b 