Andy McKee was raised in Belfast, and first grew vegetables with his father at the age of five. After an early career in pharmacy, he pursued his interest in gardening and vegetable growing, and has grown in situations ranging from a seventeenth storey window box to guerrilla gardening in the middle of a Christmas tree plantation. Andy contributed to the Transition Town initiative for Dorchester, and regularly writes for the blog section of the Ecologist Online.

Mark Gatter grew up in suburban London, but always wanted to live somewhere rural. Mark currently lives in Carmarthenshire with his wife, and spends a full week in every month in his two-acre smallholding with his rescue sheep, chickens and dogs, a 10 x 20ft polytunnel and an area of raised beds. They grow as much organic food as they possibly can, and enjoy giving it away at least as much as eating it themselves.

Practical guidance is illustrated with helpful black and white illustrations throughout, and two plate sections with colour photographs.