“ Si hortum in bibliotheca habes ; deerit nihil”Marcus Tullius Cicero
“ If you have a garden and a library , you have everything you need ”
showy gardening book show you wintertime scenes of come heads and forage tastily rim in hoarfrost frost . How often does that happen in Suffolk ? So in winter when the confidential information howl and the terra firma is freeze hearty , once you ’ve counted your snowdrops , it ’s time to hold another log on the fire and read about gardening . There are so many Word write now , many of them with glossy pictures and pedestrian text . In this dumbed - down years it seems that many books are no longer meant to be read , but flicked through like magazine publisher ; they are chocolate table book . Some of them just give you a listing of plant with descriptions .
There is also a people of how - to volume out there , and monograph of particular metal money , but the book I like to curve up with are discursive books . I wish books that are intelligently written with a happy combining of a skilful literary expressive style , brainpower and a immense knowledge . I like them to be quirky and conversational . The inimitable Christopher Lloyd is always readable , and fits the bill dead ; he is knowledgeable and opinionative and always fun to read , although I do think he must have been colour- blind . His ‘ The Well - temper Garden’1970 is a classic , but all his Book are worth read .
Robin Lane Fox is an Oxford father and a humans of smashing scholarship who write very well . His best two Book are ‘ Better gardening’1982 and ‘ Variations of a Garden ’ . 1986 .
Miriam Ostler is not so well-educated but her book ‘ A Gentle Plea for Chaos’1988 is a lyric account of developing a garden .
If you love rose then Peter Beales‘s Quran ‘ Visions of Roses’1996’is the one for you . It takes you on a tour of some of the great rose gardens of Europe and America and gives you great ideas for how to develop them . It has marvelous photographs by Vivian Russell .
Peter Smithers was a supporter of Ian Fleming and it has been suggested he was the example for James Bond . After a magisterial diplomatical career he created a famous garden at Vico Morcote in Switzerland . He bred many plants including tree peonies , magnolias and nerines . He bring home the bacon the Veitch Gold Memorial medal for contribution to gardening . His book ‘ Adventures of a Gardener’1995 is illustrate with his own wonderful photos and it is engrossing .
My preferred gardening books though were write in the former years of the twentieth one C . I love the nostalgia of garden artist such as Earnest Arthur Rowe , Helen Allingham and Alfred Parsons . It was a time of change in gardening mode . The Victorians with their love of principal colours , bedding out , and carpet bedding were shaken up by the new ideas of William Robinson of Gravetye Manor , East Grinstead , in his innovatory record ‘ TheWild Garden’1870 . It marked the start of the craze for bungalow - horticulture .
The books of the incredibly influential Gertrude Jekyll , who was Robinson ’s champion , are all still relevant today and are back in print . My favourite is ‘ Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden’first published in 1908 . She was an artist who encouraged people to plan their garden so as to make pictures using harmonious colour , shape and pattern . For a pick of her authorship , ‘ A Gardener ’s Testament’is a posthumous survival of her work published in 1937 .
The name of Reginald Farrer , illustrious as an explorer and industrial plant collector , is synonymous with rock horticulture . He travelled extensively in distant places of the world and like all his generation had no scruples about preservation . He died on one of his gardening stumble in Burma at the historic period of forty . His book ‘ My Rock Garden’1907 is a delight ; informative , eccentric and beautifully written . There is also an excellent biography about him ‘ A Rage for Rock Gardening’2004 by Nicola Shulman .
Farrer ’s friend , the influential E.A. Bowles , who go with him on plant trips in Europe wrote a howling description of his garden , Myddleton House at Enfield in the three book ‘ My Garden in Spring’1914,‘My Garden in Summer’1914 andMy Garden in Autumn and Winter’1915 . They are informatory and comic . He was a plantsman rather than an creative person . In reply to the Gertrude Jekyll shoal of gardening he sound out that he objected to plant as ‘ esthetic furniture’used like ‘ ribbon or embroidery silk’ . Gardeners from all over the country gravitated to Myddleton House and countless plants bear his name . Amongst my favourites are the lovely little snowdropGalanthus plicatus‘Augustus ’ , the perennial wallflower , Erysimum‘Bowles Mauve ’ and the charming , very other , littleCrocus chrysanthus‘E.A. Bowles ’ He was a confirmed bachelor and his usage of think of little boys in the garden at weekend seems rather alarming from today ’s perspective . But still ‘ autres temps , autres moeurs ’ .
A horticulture wise man of Bowles was Canon Hestercombe who wrote a very influential book;‘In aGloucestershire Garden’1895 about his home at the Vicarage , Bitton , near Bristol . He had the easy life of a country parson and gained a report as an excellent plantsman . He was a great collector and phytologist rather than an creative person and his garden was full of rarities . He invariably switch plant with Kew and was very generous with his treasures . He had 10 child so apparently gardening was n’t his only hobby .
Ellen Willmott was a friend and adorer of Canon Hestercombe . Her friendship with him lasted which was amazing as she had an interminable capacity to offend and take offense . She only produced two books , one of picture , and the other book‘The genus Rosa’which is ponderous and heavy sledding . But it is worth take the life history about her by Audrey Le Lievre : ‘ Miss Willmott of Warley Place : Her Life and Her Gardens’1980 , if only to be amazed at the scale of her gardening . She was an heiress but make out to spend her vast chance on horticulture . As well as Warley Place , Essex , which was huge , she owned home in France and Italy . She had 104 gardener and her extravagance and obsession with flora were on a jaw - dropping scale .
I ’ll finish with the wonderful Margery Pisces the Fishes from East Lambrook Manor in Somerset . Her book’WeMade a Garden’1956 is a classic . She garden with her husband , the dreadful Walter , who was a tyrant and think he knew well than her about all things horticultural , with his manicured lawn , neat rows of dahlias and manure voodoo . obviously he had a nurseryman who lavished love and care on his chrysanthemums , stroking their petals and overlook the other plant life in their favor . Walter taught him a lesson by cutting off their head . When Walter give-up the ghost , Margery really came into her own as a gardener . All her Christian Bible are the sort you go back to clock time and again . She was accused of create ‘ floral chaos ’ but her fashion of ‘ cram them in ’ cottage gardening is one that appeals to me ; an instance of bungalow gardeningpar excellence .
