HUSBANDRY: MAKING GARDENS WITH MR B
by Isabel Bannerman
Pimpernel Press, £14.99
ISBN 978-1914902949
A perceptive and engrossing view of making a new garden – with a little help from Mr B – by one of today’s leading garden designers.
Reviewer Anna Pavord is a garden writer and GI contributing editor.
‘Making a garden together… is what Mr B and me like to do best,’ writes garden designer Isabel Bannerman. Husbandry tells the story of the garden she and her husband are currently making at Ashington Manor in Somerset, where they moved three years ago. But, as the title suggests, it is also a book about a quixotic marriage, and a working relationship that has lasted for four decades. And it is brilliantly done.
There’s an exuberance and generosity about the Bannermans’ gardens that is very beguiling, impressive too, since here, at Ashington, as in their previous gardens at Trematon Castle and Hanham Court, they start with a fair amount of chaos. But finding a balance between ‘chaos and charm’ is the key to the Bannerman style. ‘We like a bit of wonk,’ says the author.
Since most of us are not professional garden designers, it’s refreshing to be told at the outset that there is no such thing as taste, only ‘one’s personal whims and fantasies’.
But a great deal of excellent advice follows. Understand, for instance, that a garden ‘is always in the throes of becoming something else’. Take time to absorb its surroundings. Understand, too, the soil you have inherited. There is excellent advice on paths, and what they should be made of. Plants are not the start of her own garden making, says Bannerman, but whatever plants you use, use a lot of the same thing. She is also refreshingly honest; the newly planted rose garden at Ashington has not worked out as she hoped. ‘Maybe it will come right, or it could be one of those little bits which never works.’ We all have those.
Isabel Bannerman’s last book, Scent Magic (2019), was a luscious production, heavily illustrated. Husbandry is more modest, the size of a paperback, but so beguiling in its content, so poignant in its perceptions, that when I had finished it, I started at the beginning once more, to read it all over again.
BEYOND BOLD: INSPIRATION/ COLLABORATION/EVOLUTION
by Shelia Brady, Lisa Delplace and Eric Groft
Pointed Leaf Press, $85
ISBN 978-0977787586
An enthusiastic and detailed review of the design projects of landscape architecture firm OvS, pioneers of the naturalistic planting style.
Reviewer Tim Richardson is a garden critic and writer.
Nearly half a century ago, Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden founded OvS in Washington, DC. At the time, they were outliers, pursuing a naturalistic planting style, using a fairly narrow range of plants for climatic and maintenance reasons, more than a decade before designers in Europe. The typical OvS landscape is still defined by broad swathes of perennials and grasses in simple but powerful shapes.
Oehme and van Sweden passed away in 2011 and 2013 respectively, and the authors of this book have taken up the mantle of the firm. All three have had a long association with the company. They have maintained the practice authentically with a few updates, chiefly involving sustainability issues. This book is a series of case studies of projects from the past decade or so, loosely arranged into thematic chapters, with detailed descriptions of the design challenges faced.
Highlights include the gardens at the American Museum in Bath, and Lake Forest, Illinois, a reinvigoration of a classic design by early 20th-century naturalistic designer Jens Jensen. The Native Plant Garden at the New York Botanical Garden is probably the firm’s most high-profile commission of the past decade, and it is given its due here. One surprising project is Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana, a 10,000-acre former ranch, which now contains sculpture and performance venues. The firm’s light-touch role here was largely bound up with the creation of walking and cycling routes.
Beyond Bold can be recommended – but with reservations. While the text is usefully descriptive, it is somewhat lacking in critical or historic insight, reading at times more like marketing or website copy. Perhaps in this case it should be read alongside the original – Bold Romantic Gardens (1991) by James van Sweden in which the author is consistently more generous to the reader than to his own practice – as a way to mitigate any sense of self-praise.
GARDENING IN A CHANGING WORLD: PLANTS, PEOPLE AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS
by Darryl Moore
Pimpernel Press, £20
ISBN 978-1910258286
A timely, in-depth book that is an essential read for anyone who gardens and cares about the future of our planet.
Reviewer Annie Guilfoyle is a garden designer and lecturer.
If there were a prize for ‘most timely publication’ of the year, this book would be a contender. Having experienced the highest-ever recorded temperatures in the UK this summer, with gardens that were completely scorched, is this our wake-up call? Landscape designer Darryl Moore explores how we have reached this position and suggests how we might find a way, through designing and gardening more sustainably, to improve the situation.
Garden books are often inclined to be picture-led, with less focus on words and hard facts. This book bucks the trend, with few images and plenty to say. I was struck by the amount of meticulous, in-depth research that has gone into the writing of this book. Moore has left no stone unturned in his quest to unravel the complex situation that we find ourselves in. He writes: ‘We all have responsibilities as gardeners in the widest sense of the word, and our actions matter.’
The first part of the book focuses on Plants as Producers and as Panacea, tackling subjects such as nature disconnect, novel ecosystems and cleaning up the garden, where Moore draws our attention to the ‘unholy trinity of pesticides, peat and plastic pots’ to which our industry is still firmly wedded. Plants as Pictures then describes how and why people have gardened throughout history, from the early Mesopotamians to the late Beth Chatto.
In the second half of the book, Plants as Processes; Possibilities and Partners, Moore focuses on the people and places who have been advancing the study of plants and planting in more recent times. We travel from Germany and the USA to Sheffield and southern France. Moore has a great deal to say, yet this must-read book is expertly divided into neat, digestible sections that are jam-packed with fascinating and vital information.
BRILLIANT ENGLISH GARDENS
by Clive Nichols
Clearview, £60
ISBN 978-1908337641
A celebration of the English garden through a sumptuous masterclass in garden photography by one of the UK’s foremost garden photographers.
Reviewer Rae Spencer-Jones is a garden writer.
Twenty-seven gardens, spanning several centuries, and in locations ranging from the West Sussex coast to County Durham, feature in this latest book from Clive Nichols, one of the UK’s foremost garden photographers.
With no introduction to explain why Nichols chose these of the many brilliant English gardens that he must have photographed, the reader can only surmise, but there is no doubt that each one is worthy of its presence in the book. They range from well-known classics such as the 18th-century Forde Abbey created by Sir Francis Gwyn in the grounds of a former 12th-century Cistercian monastery, to the contemporary and ingenious 21st-century coastal garden, with its drawbridge access to the beach in West Wittering, by designer Anthony Paul.
This book is a visual ode, not only to the gardens but to some outstanding designers, head gardeners and garden owners. Through a short explanatory text for each garden, but mostly luxurious images that spill off the edge of each page, Nichols pays homage to, among others, Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf and his glorious prairie planting at the Hauser & Wirth garden in Somerset; garden owners Stephen and Jane Baughan of Aston Pottery in Oxfordshire, who take four days to plant their 70m border with 5,000 flowering annuals from 120 packets of seed; and Mat Reese, latterly a gardener at Great Dixter, who now oversees the spectacular flower gardens at Malverleys in Hampshire.
Brilliant English Gardens is a big book by any standards. However, the sumptuous format offers an invitation to fully immerse oneself in this masterclass in garden photography. Through Nichols’ artistry in capturing the magical qualities of light, whether at dawn, noon or dusk, or his innate ability to compose the perfect garden image, each of these superb gardens shows up at its very best, and Nichols demonstrates why he remains at the top of his game.
POTS: FILL YOUR CONTAINERS WITH PLANTS, TEND TO THEIR NEEDS, WATCH THEM FLOURISH
by Harriet Rycroft
Frances Lincoln (Bloom Gardener’s Guide), £12.99
ISBN 978-0711272484
For the aspiring curator of planted containers striving for fresh ideas, this manifesto on the art of gardening in pots is essential reading.
Reviewer Tom Attwood is a plantsperson and nursery co-owner.
I have long been an admirer of Harriet Rycroft’s work and it is a joy to have her philosophy on this multidisciplinary artform distilled so eloquently in this small but sumptuous book.
The shackles of horticultural convention all too often stifle creativity in the garden, but Rycroft urges the reader not to worry about ‘doing it wrong’, but to think about creating a ‘beautiful plant community’. There is an emphasis on experimentation stemming from years of practical experience beyond the confines of the author’s own garden.
Topics include the cyclical nature of working with planted containers, the virtues of seasonal bulbs, recalibrating your planted pots for the next portion of the year, and creating a semi-permanent display with ornamental trees or shrubs.
The chapters of the book are a sequential journey beginning with the art of planting containers and concluding with how to keep your planted creations in good condition and help them to thrive – an all too often overlooked skillset. A wealth of knowledge is there to be absorbed. I particularly enjoyed the breakdown of all the components that make up the featured arrangements (including quantities of bulbs and so on).
Extensive photographs sit harmoniously alongside the text, helping to articulate the techniques covered, but also skilfully capturing the atmosphere and authenticity of the author’s own garden.
A catalogue of plants worthy of consideration makes up a significant portion of the book, where trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals and grasses that have been described or photographed in other chapters are lauded with fuller, more comprehensive cultural notes.
The joy of planting in containers is the creative fluidity it affords you. That freedom to experiment and unashamedly stray beyond boundaries is something this book expresses and celebrates at every opportunity.
HORTUS CURIOUS: DISCOVER THE WORLD’S MOST WEIRD AND WONDERFUL PLANTS AND FUNGI
by Michael Perry
Dorling Kindersley, £16.99
ISBN 978-0241561553
This plant book with a difference aims to instill a sense of curiosity in the plant blind and bring the wonders of botany to new audiences.
Reviewer Jane Perrone is a freelance writer and podcaster.
One glance at the shocking pink cover and it is glaringly obvious that Hortus Curious is not your average plant book. Perhaps we need a shock. Plant blindness – or plant awareness disparity, as it is also known – is a serious and growing issue: one survey found that 82 per cent of British children could not identify an oak leaf.
Hortus Curious is aimed at people who would be unlikely to pick up a regular plant book, introducing them to 40 charismatic plants and fungi, from cotton and cacao to the carnivorous Venus flytrap and the squirting cucumber, which gets its name from its explosive, seedspreading fruits. The book is arranged into chapters that include Plants Behaving Badly and Superheroes, designed to entice even the greatest plant sceptic to dip into its pages. Watercolourist Aaron Apsley’s pictures bring the words to life beautifully, offering accurate illustrations that reminded me of some of my favourite plant books from my childhood in the 1970s and 80s.
Hortus Curious is certainly in the author’s wheelhouse. Michael Perry, via his alter ego Mr Plant Geek, is often to be found dispensing plant knowledge on daytime television, including the shopping channel QVC, and on social media. Perry’s presenting experience shows in his writing.
The book is squarely aimed at the gift market, and its writing style is very casual and conversational – Ihave to admit that the editor in me winced at a sentence starting with the word ‘Okay’. However, readers who find more traditional plant books too intimidating (or indeed dull) may well be drawn in.
This certainly happened in my house: I left a copy of Hortus Curious on the dining room table and came back to find my 12-year-old son avidly turning the pages. He soon began telling me about the biggest flower in the world and an orchid that looks like a duck.
THE SEED DETECTIVE: UNCOVERING THE SECRET HISTORIES OF REMARKABLE VEGETABLES
by Adam Alexander
Chelsea Green Publishing, £18.99
ISBN 978-1915294005
The fascinating tale of one man’s detective hunt to uncover the stories behind some of the world’s most unusual vegetables and save them before it’s too late.
Reviewer Sally Nex is a writer and professional gardener.
Some years ago, BC (Before Covid), my family owned a house in France. It was surrounded by vineyards and pretty villages where you’d find marchés des producteurs with stalls tumbling with tomatoes, melons and lettuces grown and sold by local people.
Once, I bought a plump, pink garlic bulb and brought it home – this was also BB (Before Brexit) so I was still allowed to. I save cloves from its descendants to this day. They produce spicy heads the size of a toddler’s fist and nothing has matched them since.
I think Adam Alexander might be interested in my garlic. His quest for locally grown vegetable varieties has taken him to many markets, from Laos and Syria to Donetsk in Ukraine, where (in happier times) he bought the sweet red pepper that started it all.
Like Alexander, I find seeds passed from gardener to gardener incredibly evocative: each time I plant my garlic, I’m back in that Gironde marketplace. He’s an entertaining storyteller, full of quirky encounters with impatient stall holders and helpful translators (one shared the contents of his mum’s veg garden). His eclectic curiosity skips from favism (a genetic mutation rendering you allergic to broad beans – who knew?) and its role in Pythagoras’ death, to Neanderthal eating habits, via Louis XIV’s France. At its heart are tales of extraordinary, colourful, rare vegetables. We’ve now lost 90 per cent of vegetable varieties: Garden Organic board member Alexander is devoted to finding those that are left so he can grow them in his three-anda-half-acre Welsh garden and provide seed for the Heritage Seed Library.
Alexander’s descriptions just make you want to try them yourself. Now on my must-grow list are towering Luang Prabang mangetouts, Lamon beans and dauntingly named ‘Bloody Warrior’ lettuces. It’s down to people like Alexander that I can still get hold of seeds. I’m profoundly grateful.
Other books
More new releases, from how to make the most of groundcover plants to experiencing the restorative power of trees.
TEAMING WITH BACTERIA
by Jeff Lowenfels Timber Press, £18.99, ISBN 978-1643261393
Lowenfels digs into new science behind how endophytic bacteria supply nutrients to plants and explains how this applies to gardeners and growers.
BLOOM
by Lauren Camilleri and Sophia Kaplan Smith Street Books, £28, ISBN 978-1922417855
The co-founders of the Sydneybased online plant store Leaf Supply demonstrate how to enjoy flowering plants indoors.
THE COMPLETE BOOK OF GROUND COVERS
by Gary Lewis Timber Press, £40, ISBN 978-1604694604
Expert advice on groundcover plants of varying colours, textures and forms for a wide range of situations and conditions.
HABITAT CREATION IN GARDEN DESIGN
by Catherine Heatherington and Alex Johnson The Crowood Press, £20, ISBN 978-0719840968
Advice on marrying garden design principles and an ecological outlook to create wildlife havens.
TREE GLEE
by Cheryl Rickman Welbeck Publishing, £16.99, ISBN 978-1801291170
A look at the science behind how trees comfort, restore and revitalise us – plus what we can learn from woodlands to improve our wellbeing.