Curl up with a book
Posted:24 June 2012
When heading out into the garden isnt the best option (will this wind and rain ever stop?), or when I get those 3am awakenings when the mind just won’t still itself, Ill often reach for one of my many gardening books.
Most are modern books, recently written and covering the endlessly diverse subjects of design, planting and what do when New Gardening by Mathew Wilson, Dan Pearsons Spirit, Garden Design Details by Arne Maynard, and anything by John Brookes and Noel Kingsbury spring to mind, though there are so many more. The musings of the incredible Christopher Lloyd and Beth Chatto inspire, amuse and inform quite uniquely no matter how many times I read them (Christopher Lloyds Cuttings is a particular favourite).
Recently though, I have been reading a few second-hand gardening books. I thought I’d tell you about three of them. Two were gifts and one I picked up second hand from Much Ado Books in Alfriston, but treasures can also be found when scouting around boot sales and charity shops.
One Lousy Free Packet of Seed by Lynne Truss (she of Eats Shoots and Leaves fame!), her debut novel published 1994. A tale of absurdity, farce and a particular Britishness. From the inside fly leaf: “Osborne Lonsdale, forty-eight, writes for Come Into the Garden. He contributes a weekly celebrity interview column called ‘Me and My Shed’. His small, intense friend Makepeace is a professional book reviewer and part-time pathological liar. Together they travel to Honiton, by the A303, in a Fiesta van, in bleak November. Osborne is unwittingly adored by Michelle, the frustrated chief sub-editor, who writes him kinky ‘readers’ letters’ after work for her own amusement. Lillian, the editor’s lazy secretary, who hates Michelle, mischievously sends them on. Tim, the deputy editor, knows nothing about anything, but worries anyway”…and so it goes on.
Better Gardening by Robin Lane Fox, published 1986, was a gift from a friend to whom I had to confess that I had never heard of him. Wikipedia notes that he is “an expert gardener, he is the gardening correspondent of the Financial Times and a noted opponent of garden gnomes” – so really I should have!
From the inside fly leaf – “In this memorable book, Robin Lane Fox draws on his wide experience to pick and discuss better plants, bulbs, trees and shrubs for beginners and experts alike. Wherever possible, their sources and cheap means of increase are listed. The result is not only an encouragement to try new plants or begin a garden-plan with confidence. It is filled with advice from an observant eye and is written with a style, humour, and sense of romance which have long delighted his weekly readers and place this book beside the best of English garden literature.”
A Little History of British Gardening by Jenny Uglow, published 2004, is an excellent read, rich with historical facts yet humble and humorous detail too: “Did the Romans have rakes? Did the monks get muddy? Did the potato seem really, really weird when it arrived on our shores?”
From the inside fly leaf – “This lively ‘potted’ history of gardening in Britain takes us on a garden tour from the thorn hedges around prehistoric settlements to the rage for decking and ornamental grasses today. It tracks down the ordinary folk who worked the earth – the apprentice boys and weeding women, the florists and nursery gardeners – as well as aristocrats and grand designers and famous plant-hunters. Coloured by Jenny Uglow’s own love for plants, and brought to life in the many vivid illustrations, it deals not only with flowery meads, grottoes and vistas, landscapes and ha-has, parks and allotments, but tells you, for example, how the Tudors made their curious knots; how housewives used herbs to stop freckles; how the suburbs dug for victory in World war II.”
So if the great outdoors doesn’t offer warm distraction, maybe turn up the heating and curl up with a good second-hand book as though it were December rather than June!