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JUNE 2017 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 153 The Reviewer A selection of the best garden writing to appear this month BOOKS Beth Chatto’s Shade Garden by Beth Chatto, The Pimpernel Press, £30 Originally published in 2002 as Beth Chatto’s Woodland Garden, this is an updated version of a modern classic. Full of timeless wisdom that will stand any gardener in good stead, it is perhaps the ultimate guide to gardening in shade. The main body of the book is a tour of the woodland garden through the year, and Chatto makes for a fine guide for the journey, with her delightful prose and acute observations of the plants that thrive in the shade. Describing her woodland garden as ‘tranquil and yet full of life and interest’ this description also perfectly sums up the book. The recurring theme of the images of her garden that accompany the story is one of abundance, and serve as further inspiration to every gardener in possession of a bare and empty space beneath a tree canopy. This is a chance to discover new plants for shade and to see others in a completely new light, thanks to Chatto’s careful observations. Once the tour of the year is complete, an A-Z of Chatto’s recommended plants for shade, complete with notes on their quirks, will – in the author’s words – ‘dispel the myth that gardening in the shade is a curse rather than a blessing.’ Botanical Shakespeare by Gerit Quealy, Harper Design, £17.99 Anyone with a passing interest in Shakespeare will be aware of at least one botanical reference in his body of work. But was Shakespeare a Master Gardener? In researching Botanical Shakespeare, author Gerit Quealy found around 175 references to specific plants, and many more notes on gardening practice, so it is little wonder, she writes, that some gardeners would like to claim his as one of their own. But let that argument remain in the ivory tower. This is not a book for the serious literary scholar. Rather, Quealy encourages readers to use the book to help ‘map out plans for a garden plot or pot based on your favourite play or characters, or assemble a bouquet based on subliminal messages’. Moreover, it is surprising just how diverse those plants in the 17th century were. Sugar, dates and pomegranates hint at the exotic influences of the time, while ivy, oats and nettles were more quotidian. Naturally, the entry for roses runs to several pages. Laid out in a classic compendium style, excerpts are arranged by plant and complemented with charming illustrations by Sumie Hasegawa. Gardening with Conifers by Adrian Bloom, Firefly Books, £19.95 To change the public perception of a much-maligned plant is a tough ask – but Adrian Bloom knows he has a good case when it comes to extolling the virtues of conifers. Few British gardeners have as long an association with conifer growing as Bloom. Having used them as key plants in the creation of his Norfolk garden, Foggy Bottom, in 1966, he has vast experience to support the advice he offlers. An update of a work first published in 2001, Adrian brings his knowledge and experiences up to date with critiques of conifers that will be new to many. A hands-on knowledge of the subject is evident on every page and the photographs of conifers in his garden are testimony to their innovative use. Many gardeners write offl conifers as cumbersome, unruly hedging plants but Bloom’s practical advice, paired with enviable results, provides strong evidence to the contrary. The pages on pruning are a real masterclass in managing conifers; blending them with other plants and shaping them into eye-catching features WORDS in their own right. VIVIENNE HAMBLY; GREG LOADES
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JUNE 2017 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 155 BOOKS Topiary, Knots and Parterres by Caroline Foley, The Pimpernel Press, £50 In the genre of the classic English garden, topiary is an invaluable element. From providing a focal point and structure, to introducing an element of wit, its functions are manifold. And having been in use since at least the time of Pliny the Younger in the 1st century AD, it is worthwhile, then, to know something of the history of topiary, which is what author Caroline Foley traces in Topiary, Knots and Parterres. In the first book to cover the entire history of the subject, spanning its use by the Romans to designs by Tom Stuart-Smith (whose work regularly appears in The English Garden) Foley’s intention is to knock topiary off its perch as the grandee of gardening techniques. “It is a medium that deserves to be in every gardener’s box of tricks, and the techniques should be at the disposal of every horticultural student,” she says. Foley herself is the editor of Topiarus, the pan-European journal of the European Boxwood and Topiary Society, and so is well-placed to make such a survey. The result of her labour is a magnificent hardback comprising authoritative text matched with excellent, well-researched illustrations. It offers inspiration to seek out the many fine examples of topiary in this country and across Europe, as well as encouragement to emulate something of those great and varied gardens in smaller domestic settings. Botanical Sketchbooks by Helen and William Bynum, Thames & Hudson, £29.95 For certain characters, the union of adventure, botanical discovery and the compulsion to draw must be one of the headiest imaginable. It certainly was for the likes of Thomas Baines, born in Kings Lynn, whose position as the offlcial artist of the Cape Frontier Wars in South Africa in the 1850s afforded opportunity to sketch local flora almost unknown to European botanists. Exploration in Australia followed, before he returned to southern Africa on an expedition to the Victoria Falls. His is but one story in this publication that draws together the sketches, rather than the finished works, of botanical artists in various fields. To get the measure of this substantial topic, the authors have categorised it into themes. Baines and fellow explorers fall into Made on Location; Carl Linnaeus and Beatrix Potter may be found in Doing Science; John Constable and Charles Rennie Mackintosh appear in Making Art; and in A Pleasing Occupation find John Day and Annie Morse. Locations include Italy, America, Australia, Japan, China and India. Illustrations cover the gamut of artefacts, from letters and herbarium sheets to notebook pages and works on vellum. As such it is a transporting work, worthy as much for its factual contribution as its capacity to stir in the imagination visions of far off lands and adventure. The Jam Maker’s Garden by Holly Farrell, Frances Lincoln, £17.99 It is reasonable to suppose that much of the material in this book would have been common knowledge 100 or even 50 years ago. Yet for those new to gardening – and indeed to trend-led jams, jellies, pickles, chutneys, butters, cordials and syrups – The Jam Maker’s Garden makes a fine starting point. At the front of the book, growing notes are concise and cover basics, but are not so exhaustive as to be off-putting. Farrell touches on kitchen garden design, root-stocks for fruit trees, and the basic principles of sowing and planting. Later, kitchen notes consider types of sugar and such things as scum, temperature and bottling, and, crucially, some trouble-shooting. From there follow recipes and growing notes arranged by season and plant. At first, strawberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants, but the work also notes more unusual preserving crops such as carrots, beetroot, beans, garlic and rhubarb. A chapter on herbs and flowers is provocation to consider flavour more carefully. The book is well illustrated with a combination of line drawings and images of fruits, leaves and styled shots of preserves. The layout is engaging. The Jam Maker’s Garden – something of a misnomer: of 53 recipes, 13 are strictly for jam – is a reminder that bottling was borne of making do, and offers encouragement to return to those practical but satisfying origins.
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JUNE 2017 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 157 How did it feel to follow in the footsteps of Vita Sackville-West and Christopher Lloyd in writing for The Observer? It felt like a luxury and a privilege. I never dreamt that I would end up following in the footsteps of people who for me were writing mentors. I love how they brought gardens to life by the way they wrote. Did the transition from having a tiny garden in London to 20 acres in the country change the way you wrote about gardening? Inevitably it did. It was a very difierent space and you always have to bear in mind your audience because the reader needs to feel like they can take something away from each piece. Writing about plants in detail helps me achieve this. I read once that Christopher Lloyd used to take a sample of a plant he was writing about and bring it to his writing desk in a pot so he could observe it at close quarters as he wrote. I do this too wherever possible. How have you changed as a gardener since moving from a small garden to a large one? I now take a longer-term view of the garden. When I moved to Somerset I started planting trees in tens. I could only accommodate one or two in my garden in Peckham. Gardening in Somerset was a case of looking up and looking out, whereas in London I was looking in and looking down. When you garden in a bigger space you have the same amount of energy but it goes into a wider range of things. Gardening is as diffcult in a small space as a large space. In a small space you have to think about keeping things calm and clear. In a bigger space the challenge is to try and pace it. I am conscious of not doing too much and of trying not to make too much of a mark. Your articles display an acute observation of the seasons. Is this instinctive or is it something you have learned? The changing seasons are something that I have always thought about. Ever since I was young I wanted to be outside. There are difierences in gardens between months and weeks, days and even hours, right down to the detail of minutes. It might be that the light falls in a way that it never will again and I am keen to observe these nuances. What is the best thing a gardener with a small urban plot can do to remain aware of the changing seasons? Make sure that every season is celebrated in the garden. Having interest all year round doesn’t have to involve having 52 plants so that one looks good every week. Many plants work extremely hard and have three or four seasons of interest, whether in bark, flower or berry. Make sure you find room for a plant for each season, and choose plants that work hard and do not just have one moment of glory. Which topics have generated the strongest feelings among your readers? I think readers warmed to the idea of growing with nature and not against it. Also, I hope that my forays into guerilla gardening encouraged people to be confident in gardening against the odds. I think that today there is a wider consciousness of the need to garden in urban areas, and that you can do it in your own way. You can break the rules. There are 100,000 difierent ways to grow a plant. ■ Natural Selection: A Year in the Garden by Dan Pearson Faber, £20 Natural Selection – A Year in the Garden is a month-by-month collection of landscape architect Dan Pearson’s gardening columns from The Observer Q&A BOOKS IMAGE JASON INGRAM
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JUNE 2017 THE ENGLISH GARDEN 161 Summer scent and splendour • Magnificent formality at Bruern Abbey in Oxfordshire • Stylish planting in a Cheshire garden designed by Tom Stuart-Smith • A steeply sloping plot in Sussex with curving borders and wildflower meadows • A tiny city garden with echoes of Great Dixter’s exuberance • How to grow gorgeous martagon lilies PLUS Lavender advice from a Somerset farm, plants for butterflies, and an expert guide to choosing and positioning sculpture Don’t miss out. Buy single copies or subscribe now at IMAGES theenglishgarden.co.uk or telephone 01858 438854 CLIVE NICHOLS; JOE WAINWRIGHT; LYNN KEDDIE; DIANNA JAZWINSKI Coming next issue in ON SALE 21 JUNE
162 THE ENGLISH GARDEN JUNE 2017 ILLUSTRATION JULIA RIGBY PORTRAIT RICHARD BLOOM A Reason to Garden Katherine Swift ponders the many motivations that drive us when we create a garden, and what, ultimately, our gardens all have in common LAST WORD infi nity pool. Or your garden becomes somewhere where you can be happily invisible instead, wearing your oldest clothes, hair a mess. The garden as retreat. But whatever sort of garden you have, whatever sort of gardening you do – move house every few years, re-invent it (or yourself) half a dozen times in the course of a lifetime – you fi nally fi nd yourself surrounded by plants that remind you of other people and other places: that slip of lavender given by a friend and grown now into a hedge; that handsome variety of squash or poeticallynamed bean, given as seed and treasured up to be planted anew each year; the cutting of a cutting of a rose from Spain, its name long lost, but its giver remembered. Your garden fi lls with memories. And this, I think, is what gardening is all about, and why it is so uniquely satisfying. It links all the selves you are and all the selves you have been. It links past and future, man and nature, wild and cultivated. It brings out the best in all of us. ■ Gardening links all the selves you are and all the selves you have been. It brings out the best in all of us. “ What is a garden for? And what is it that we do when we garden? Sometimes, of course, it just goes with the territory. You buy a house and there is a patch of ground attached. You are busy with a budding career or a young family, and you are thankful for the garden as a sort of outdoor room, where you can do many of the things you do in an indoor room – reading, relaxing, just hanging out – plus some others that would be harder indoors, such as sunbathing, trampolining or playing football. Gardening, if you have time for it at all, is a sort of green housekeeping, with weeding standing in for dusting, and mowing the lawn the horticultural equivalent of vacuuming the carpet. But then perhaps you start to notice the plants, and (more insidiously) the plants in other people’s gardens. This is when an element of competitiveness creeps in. You have a choice – so many choices! And it is then that the principles of interior design start to be applied. You scan the magazines and the garden centres, choose the colours and shapes of plants for your garden with as much care as furnishing a room. A few years down the line, and perhaps it is food you’re after. You are sick of supermarket vegetables, or haven’t enough space for all the Cavolo nero your clean eating requires. You dig up the lawn and register for an allotment. Pigeons and cabbage white butterfl ies haunt your dreams. This is gardening as paranoia. But later on you turn the garden over to wildlife entirely, planting buddlejas for the butterfl ies and teasels for the goldfi nches. You leave dead wood lying about for the beetles and build a bugs’ hotel. This is gardening as nature conservation. Then perhaps you fall in love. With bearded irises or French lavender, African marigolds or old fashioned pinks, it doesn’t matter what: you’re hooked, and every year you buy more. You seek out rarities. You make a Collection. Or perhaps you decide to make a Statement: you build a Japanese teahouse or install a stainless steel
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