Right Plant, Right Place!
The Beth Chatto Garden in Elmstead Market, near Colchester, is one of the “must-see” gardens in the United Kingdom. I find it difficult to put the sensation I felt on my first visit to there. There was an immediate sense that this was right; that it all fitted together; that this was a garden comfortable […]
Too Good to be True?
Have some entertainment gardens left the practices of normal gardening so far to the side that they have become artifices of what a garden should be? Has the desire to be a constantly perfect attraction lead to gardening in a manner and style which is far removed not alone from the practices of the common […]
The Orchid Hunter
This is book bursting at the binding with enthusiasm and an almost obsessive love of our native orchids. Leif Bersweden, a precocious botanist who fell in love with native wildflowers as a child, was unsuccessful in his initial application for a place at Oxford University and decided to use his gap year to track down […]
The Selection!
Dan Pearson’s book, Natural Selection, draws on ten years of his columns for the Observer newspaper and are arranged in a calendar format, a diary of gardening notes. As with all such compilations, the individual parts, while all excellent in themselves, do not add up to a unified book. The organisation of the selected articles […]
Gardening for Wildlife
The countryside is no longer the haven for wildlife that it once was. Changes in how land is used and managed along with other factors have lead to an alarming fall in the population of all wildlife species. Accommodating the needs of wildlife into how we manage our gardens may smack of desperation and futility […]
Much More than Sketches!
There is so much more than botanical sketchbooks in this volume that the title does it an injustice. This is one of those treasure troves of a book where every page brings a new delight, new fascination and new interest – Botanical Sketchbooks by Helen and William Bynum Quite simply, the book is a collection of pages […]
Dream Gardens
They dream of finding an abandoned house in a wild garden and then plan in great detail what they will do with it. They are Isabel and Julian Bannerman. I have visited one of their gardens, Hanham Court near Bath, which was their home for many years and can say that they made that reality […]
What were they thinking?
How often have you looked at a designed landscape and wondered what had inspired the creator to develop the area in this particular way! This book has been both a revelation and a comfort as there are times when the source of inspiration may be clear and obvious – for example, when the garden is […]
Roy Lancaster: My Life with Plants
Roy Lancaster’s first interest in flowers was in the wild flower of the countryside around Bolton where he was born in 1937. He began work with the Bolton Parks Department, spent two years in Malaya as a national serviceman, two years at the Cambridge Botanic Gardens as a gardening student and 18 years with the […]
Irish Heritage Plants – A Review
A very nice review from Kevin Hutchinson in Irish Forestry. And I’m cheating on my blogging – as I have not written in a while – by using somebody else’s material. The holiday season, visitors, illness and computer difficulties have all intervened but I’ll soon get back to it. The break did allow great time […]
The Extra Room – A Review!
Armchair gardening is hugely popular. We have regular garden shows, garden festivals, books, newspapers, magazines, television programmes and eternal reruns on YouTube. There certainly is no lack of inspiration for the novices who wishes to create their own green paradise, their own room outside, their own Extra Room and who better to guide them along […]
The Breathing Burren – A Review
The Breathing Burren by Gordon D’Arcy It is wonderful to pick up a book and have the immediate reaction “Oh, this is beautiful” – comfortable in the hand, attractive in size, print and illustration – and there is an immediate longing to read. This is how it was when Gordon D’Arcy’s “The Breathing Burren” arrived […]
Snowdrop – far more than a simple flower!
As with its subject matter, this book is a joy, a jewel, a treasure and an interesting, and different, addition to our reading material on snowdrops. Few could deny the appeal of snowdrops in the garden, those apparently dainty flowers which defy our harsh winters and bring interest over the six months of October to […]
The Making of Place
The Overview! The extraordinary range of approaches and styles one sees in gardens throughout the world, in different countries and different cultures can be quite bewildering. It is fortunate to have one such as John Dixon Hunt, who seems to have a comprehensive knowledge and grasp of all matters of garden design, to organise such […]
Orchids – A New Enthusiasm!
Although widespread, orchids are not commonplace and to look at them growing in the wild is one of the great pleasures of the plant world. The Burren in Co. Clare, Bull Island in Dublin and The Raven in Wexford are three easily accessible locations where one may find orchids with ease and there are many […]
Coming to Terms with Your Plants!
Amicia zygomeris is an uncommon and rather unusual looking plant. The leaves are of a peculiar shape, not unlike those of the tulip tree where what would normally be a pointed end of the leaf is blunt and double-lobed with an almost cut-off appearance leading to the common name of yolk-leaved Amicia and it is […]
Gardening with Good Intentions
The Garden Awakening The essence of what Mary Reynolds has to say in The Garden Awakening is not only good and worthwhile but essential for our health and the health of our planet. We must take care of this earth and garden in a manner which respects the land rather than do harm to it. […]
Magnificent Magnolias
As I live very close to Mount Congreve Gardens in Waterford, magnolias are a big part of my gardening year as I can see not only an unrivaled selection of magnolias but also plantings in numbers which cannot be seen anywhere else. The February flowering of Magnolia campbellii, a planting made over fifty years ago […]
Pottering about in the Garden!
The quiet times in our gardens regularly allow us to enjoy delightful moments when we may witness scenes not enjoyed by those who rush along through life – the robin who comes to snap up the disturbed worm, the wood pigeon bathing in the garden pond, the house sparrows raiding the hens’ food, the stoat […]
Give a lot; Demand little!
Geraniums are among the most popular of garden plants and it is easy to understand why. They are versatile, easy to please and excellent performers. It is easy to find cultivars which will suit sun or shade, those for border display and others for ground cover under shrubs and trees. Robin Parer is the owner of […]
