The charming story of Pippinella, the green canary, as told by Pip herself to the Doctor. Although much of the material had been printed originally in 1924 for the Herald Tribune Syndicate, Lofting planned to complete the story in book form but never finished before he died. Lofting’s wife’s sister, Olga Michael, completed the book and it was published posthumously in 1950. Everything except the first and last chapter are by Lofting. Much of the material in this book is repeated from the earlier novel Doctor Dolittle’s Caravan and tells the story of the Doctor’s friend Pippinella the Green Canary, in slightly greater depth.

The doctor needs money to pay off a voyage to Africa, so he joins the circus with the pushmi-pullyu as his attraction. He enlightens a circus owner who cares little for animals, fights against the practice of fox hunting and helps other creatures such as a circus seal and cart horses too old to work.

Doctor Dolittle’s Garden is structurally the most disorganised of Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle books. The first part would fit very well into Doctor Dolittle’s Zoo, which this book follows. The rest of the book forms a reasonably coherent narrative. Doctor Dolittle’s assistant, Tommy Stubbins, reports on Professor Quetch, curator of the Dog Museum in the Home for Crossbred Dogs. Meanwhile, the doctor has learnt insect languages and hears ancient tales of a giant race of insects. Fascinated, the doctor plans a voyage to find them — but before he does so, one arrives in his garden.