Scent Magic!

Isabel Bannerman describes scent wonderfully: Witch hazel has a clean sanatorium smell of pure alcohol and Elastoplast. The crushed gourd-shaped seed pods of Wintersweet, if crushed, smell of dusty cloves, spiced wines and the depths of unused drawers. The rose, ‘Rosarie de l’Hay’ smells of cucumber, tea and laundered tablecloths laid at a table on …

Beth Chatto: A Life with Plants – A Review

There is a photograph of Beth Chatto on page 8 of this book, a black and white photograph, which I imagine is of her in her forties. She has that lean-towards-the-camera pose which was so typical of her. Her bright smile and enthusiastic face light the shot; her hair is in a short, neat perm …

The Generous Gardener

The Generous Gardener – Private Paradises Shared by Caroline Donald Caroline Donald is the gardening editor of The Sunday Times, a position which has opened the gates of many gardens to her, gates which might not otherwise be opened and in this book she recounts her visits, her interactions with her hosts and gives us …

I Need a Manbag!

You Should Have Been Here Last Week – Tim Richardson If ever there was a gardening book to be carried in the glove compartment, to be permanently in the handbag, to always find a place in your holiday luggage, to be at the bedside, the bath side or even to sit beside the throne it …

A Masterclass from Two Masters!

Humphrey Repton, one of the greatest landscape designers of the world, died in 1818 yet George Carter shows that his thoughts on gardens and design are as pertinent, relevant and applicable today as when he alive. Read all in Setting the Scene: A Garden Design Masterclass from Repton to the Modern Age George Carter has had …

A Scrapbook of Things that Caught my Eye!

John Brookes made garden designers of us all and his final book, A Landscape Legacy, is to be treasured. There have been other books over the years, a great legacy of gardens, and we are most fortunate that he has, at the very end of his life, written this present volume which he describes as …

Gardening Notes from a Late Bloomer

Clare Hastings came to the joys of gardening later in her life - something I feel she regrets deeply - and in this book passes on advice to her daughter, Calypso, in hopes that she will be less daunted and will come earlier to gardening and, as any mother would wish, have a lifelong pastime …

Head Gardeners

Ambra Edwards has given us a treasure of a book, a joy to read, insightful, informative and provocative. I have enjoyed it immensely and recommend it unreservedly. She has interviewed fourteen head gardeners, a diverse group with only a few fitting the stereotypical image, yet all might be described as people at the pinnacle of …

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 …

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 …