Gardens of the High Line
For many years I walked and enjoyed the wildness of a deserted railway line close to my home. The interaction between the industrial hard landscape and the gradual but persistent encroachment of nature is always fascinating and it was such a scene in New York which inspired the development of the High Line, one of […]
The Plant Lover’s Guide to Dahlias by Andy Vernon – A Review.
A gardening book written by a knowledgeable, enthusiastic and experienced gardener quickly wins the heart and the mind and makes for enjoyable, informative, applicable and pleasurable reading. Andy Vernon is writing about the razamatazz element of many of our summer gardens, dahlias, and provides wonderful background information on these plants, excellent advice on growing and […]
“Irish Demesne Landscapes 1660 – 1740” by Vandra Costello: A Review
“Irish Demesne Landscapes 1660 – 1740” is a scholarly treatment of an era of Irish gardening written in a delightfully accessible and pleasantly readable style. Vandra Costello was inspired after reading the diaries of Samuel Pepys to read those of John Evelyn and was very taken by the many references they contained to gardens in […]
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 […]
