Kilmacurragh: sourced in the wild by Megan O’Beirne. A review
A wonderful garden, an author who admires it greatly and a seriously flawed book. The National Botanic Gardens at Kilmacurragh are significant for the historic collection of plants which are grown there, plants introduced by the most famous of plant collectors of a bygone era and because the gardens are now in a phase of […]
The Irish Garden by Jane Powers and Jonathan Hession, A Review
In a combination of lusciously delicious text and exquisite photography, Jane Powers and Jonathan Hession have produced the most wonderful and delightful book on Irish gardens. Although there was a short interlude when Jane spent some years of childhood in America she is truly an Irish woman as she has spent most of her life […]
Secret Gardens of the Cotswords – A Review.
What is most striking about this book is the wonderful number of beautiful gardens there are within the small area of the Cotswolds and that this is matched by glorious photography and delightful text used to present them to us. Twenty gardens, all within the circle of Cheltenham, Banbury, Oxford, Cirencester and Stroud, are described […]
Authors and their Gardens by Paddy Tobin
A review of A Writer’s Garden: How Gardens Inspired Our Best-Loved Authors, by Jackie Bennett, with photographs by Richard Hanson – descriptions of nineteen gardens with the added interest of information on the authors who gardened in them. For some of the authors in this book their garden was a place which provided inspiration – […]
Designing and Planting a Woodland Garden by Keith Wiley: A Review
When I first visited Keith Wiley’s garden, “Wildside” in Devon, I though the man must be a complete nutcase. At the time, the planting of the garden was almost complete with some area still under development. To me, it didn’t seem much like “development” when I walked it as there was still a large area […]
Royal Horticultural Society: The Garden Anthology – edited by Ursula Buchan.
The Royal Horticultural Society was founded in 1804 with aims “to collect every information respecting the culture and treatment of all plants and trees” and to disseminate this information to it members. How this information was disseminated has changed but little over the course of the society’s history from “The Transactions of the Horticultural Society […]
Remarkable Plants that Shape our World – Helen and William Bynum
I have a habit since childhood that I will finish reading a book once I have started it. At times I put this down to my background, that Irish Catholic upbringing of the fifties and sixties with its sense of duty and obligation, and at others to my stupidity and obsession to see matters through […]
The Splendour of the Tree by Noel Kingsbury. Photography by Andrea Jones.
This book could well be compared to a box of the most luxurious and delicious liqueur chocolates. It presents 100 tree species with each account so rich in information, so interesting in content and so delightful in illustration that it is better to approach reading the book as one would the box of chocolates – […]
The Plant Lover’s Guide to Snowdrops by Naomi Slade – A Review.
Naomi Slade has extensive writing experience, many years with Gardening Which – and won three silver-gilt medals at the Chelsea Flower Show in the Science and Education Section while with them. She has also written for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The English Garden and The Garden. I mention this background because it adds to my […]
The Holistic Gardener by Fiann O Nuallain – A review.
Fiann O Nualláin’s book, “The Holistic Gardener”, gives a list of first aid treatments which we can make from the plants in our gardens and other to-hand materials. There are the usual suggestions for nettle burns and wasp stings along with suggestions for potions for relaxation and general wellbeing with some recipes to tempt our […]
The Atlantic Coast of Ireland – Photography by Jonathan Hession. Text by John Grenham – A review.
It was the photography of Jonathan Hession which attracted me to this book but on reading it I was delighted by the text of John Grenham. The photographs and text cover the west coast of Ireland, the Atlantic coast, from Donegal in the north-west to Cork in the south-west, illustrating the terrain of mountains, sea […]
