One of the lovely things about a birthday is that my ‘to-read’ book pile reaches new heights. I had a couple of ‘cracking’ reads given to me this year.

My Uncle always manages to winkle out something unusual and educational. Last year it was ‘Sex in the Garden’, not a Jilly Cooper novel, but a 1976 book about plant reproduction with hundreds of beautiful woodcut, steel engraving and line drawings. This year he sent ‘An Almost Impossible Thing, The radical lives of Britain’s pioneering women gardeners’.

While working as Head of Libraries and Exhibitions at the Royal Horticultural Society, Fiona Davison came across a cache of letters from a young gardener who was denied a scholarship by the RHS on the grounds that she was female. Intrigued by what happened to young Olive, Fiona began to research the wider story of early female professional gardeners and discovered a group of pioneers who battled derision and prejudice to change forever expectations of what women gardeners could do.

Today, gardens are seen as places of sanctuary and promoted as wellbeing spaces, and it’s fascinating to read the stark contrast to that idyll and a study shows that now female gardeners are just outnumbering men at 57 per cent.

I also had ‘Hannah. The Complete Story’. Dubbed as ‘an unlikely celebrity’, Hannah Hauxwell was a solitary woman farmer living a life of hardship on a remote Pennine farm, without electricity or running water. She had been left to cope alone when her parents and uncle died, running the farm between 1961 and 1988. In 1972, Yorkshire TV aired several documentaries, sharing her incredibly humble lifestyle and attitude with viewers.

Today, as well as enjoying her books and DVDs, you can visit Hannah’s Meadow, near Barnard Castle, ‘named in honour of Hannah Hauxwell, the lone Teesdale farmer, whose daily battles against poverty and the elements captivated the nation from the moment she appeared on our television screens in 1972.’

June is the best time to see the ‘thriving meadow’ with 120 types of plants, such as wood cranesbill, rough hawkbit, lady’s mantle, ragged robin, and devil’s-bit scabious. The visitor’s centre located in Hannah’s old barn, will also lead you through her story.

By using traditional farming methods all those years ago Hannah was actually ahead of the ‘conservation curve’. She was just doing what she knew, and what she’d always done. Now, thankfully, her incredible legacy is preserved for other generations to enjoy.

I have loved reading about these strong women, and who ironically, given their circumstances, make no reference to ‘stress’, but have the attitude that ‘life simply grows on’.

And my third treasured birthday book is Tim Spector’s ‘Food for Life’ cookbook. Not about strong women, I grant you, but fundamentally offering nutrition science and recipes, which will keep you strong and healthy enough to blaze a trail of your own.

Promoting better health based on gut microbiome research, which has shown the importance of a healthy gut for all round wellbeing – think ‘gut feeling’ and ‘misery guts’, the clues were there - it has an impressive list of reviews and the recipes are refreshingly simple and delicious. Unlike a lot of ‘healthy cookbooks’, I found the focus was on taste and flavours rather than just health, making it a bit more ‘health by stealth.’

And, making the most of nature’s store larder, I have already swapped out spinach for delicious young nettle leaves and added the garlicky and spicy young Jack in the Hedge leaves to salads.

A great proverb - more relevant now than ever - "Don't dig your grave with your own knife and fork."