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floragardener
valued member
Long Beach Peninsula, USA
Books!30 Jan '07 1:56 pm
1) What is your most valued gardening book?
The two volume Flora Encyclopedia
Botanica
Principles of Gardening by Hugh Johnson (I don't use this like the above references, but it was highly informative).
2) Which book has influenced you the most?
Shocking Beauty by Thomas Hobbes
Gardening from the Heart: Why Gardener's Garden
Ann Lovejoy: The Year in Bloom
3) Which is your most beautiful gardening book?
Shocking Beauty
Garden Gallery: The Plants, Art, and Hardscape Of Little and Lewis by George Little and David Lewis
Christopher Lloyd's Flower Garden
Secret Gardens by Jennifer Potter (has beautiful cutouts that you look through to see pictures)
Sorry, 5 books!)
4) ? Most entertaining garden books
From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden by Amy Stewart
Crazy About Gardening by Des Kennedy
any of Beverly Nichols 3 gardening trilogies
Note: I so want to read that book "A Garden, a Pig, and I"!! Cannot find any source for it hear in the USA so have asked my local bookseller to get it, if she can, adding "Money is (almost) no object." |
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moosey
head gardener
30 Jan '07 2:57 pm
I can send you it to read! That pig and garden book. It's delightful. E-Mail me if you're interested - I'm sure that books about pigs (and gardens) can fly.... |
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Jack Holloway
Passionate Gardener
SEQUOIA FARM Haenertsburg South Africa
Four questions about one's favourite gardening books3 Mar '07 1:28 am
It took me a while, but here are my answers to the questions I put:
1) What are your most valued gardening books?
a) On a practical level – an unassuming little book I bought in the early 90s marked down to less than ¼ price: marked £9.95 on the back cover I paid R9.99 for it: less than £2 at the time, less than 70p by today’s exchange rates. It is called “The Complete Handbook of Garden Plants” by Michael Wright, with dictionary-short entries on a surprising number of plants, and thumbnail sized paintings of perhaps 10% of them on the right hand page. 544 pages, the size of a bible – an invaluable book ‘to have with one’ when finding unknown plants. It toured Europe with me for 6 months in ’95!
b) For building my first solid foundation on garden plants: Hugh Johnson’s “Encyclopaedia of Trees”. It is a shared passion for my father and for me. Do you want to know how this garden came to be, and how I came to live here permanently in my early 40s? Ask Hugh Johnson. (Goodbye, Tradescant: I missed you in the January edition of ‘The Garden’…)
c) As the starting point for every bit of research on most garden plants, except the more obscure indigenous ones: “The new RHS Dictionary: Index of Garden Plants” by Mark Griffiths (1992) Boring as hell, not a piccie in sight, but if it is not there – be suspicious of the name it’s been given… and if it is, find the details elsewhere!
2) Which book has influenced you the most?
a) My South African guru, a lady who I had just found a contact to introduce me when she passed away: Eve Palmer. She was an authority on indigenous trees, on ‘weeds’ (which she loved), on old roses (which she grew iconoclastically into indigenous trees) and on living life with zestful, earthy sophistication. She wrote “A Gardener’s Year” towards the end of her life, drawing on 40 years of her gardening diaries. As with several other choices, I pick a representative volume from a person who influenced me. I would summarize her lesson as ‘ be observant, be precise, share the joy.’
b) The book that turned me towards gardening as a career, that spoke to both my passion for design and my love of plants: Russell Page’s “The Education of a Gardener.” In fact when I started my garden design business in Johannesburg I called myself ‘Jack Holloway – The Gardener’ in his honour. This confused a great many South Africans, newly liberated and/or newly wealthy blacks even more than old-fashioned whites, to whom ‘The Gardener’ was a scruffy black labourer pushing a wheelbarrow! (Have I ever mentioned that what drove me to the decision to live on the farm was the impossibility of running two one-man businesses 400km apart: designing and installing gardens in Johannesburg and developing a nursery on the farm. Then the school interfered with my plan to develop a plant-brokering business representing the many small growers on the mountain… and here I am 8 years later)
c) Here I’m cheating, because I shall mention the thought processes and slip in several books: I was going to say Jane Brown and specifically “Sissinghurst – Portrait of a Garden” (I have an umbilical chord to those two people) but then I thought I must also mention Tony Lord’s “Gardening at Sissinghurst” which is more about the garden and less about the process. So instead I decided to talk about Penelope Hobhouse and her acute observations on what makes for a successful garden… I eventually settled on “On Gardening”, her description of her years at Tintinhull; a glorious book, with magnificent photography and a deep understanding not only of how to keep it beautiful, but what made it beautiful in the first place.
All are gardens and gardeners who made me respond strongly to the spirit of the place whilst applying quite rigid design disciplines… An influence I hope shows from time to time in my garden!
3 Which is your most beautiful gardening book? (I love the sheer indulgence allowed here – it need not be useful, but oh how it can make the mind soar.)
a) “French Garden Style” by Georges Lévêque and Marie-Françoise Valéry published by Frances Lincoln in 1990. Here I first came across the names of many famous French gardeners – people like Princess Sturdza at ‘Le Vasterival’ and the glorious ribbons of colour created by the Duc d’Harcourt at Thury-Harcourt. Breathtaking photography, often of gardens showing breathtaking focus of design and needing breathtaking wealth to maintain… ah weel , I’h kin dream, kin’t I’h!
b) “Gardens of Obsession – Eccentric and Extravagant Visions” by Gordon Taylor and Guy Cooper. Ranging from the Aztec topiary of the Tulcan cemetery in Ecuador or the creation of the entire Seurat painting ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Island of a Grande Jatte’ in topiary at a school for the deaf in Ohio (I kid you not), to Chris Parsons who uses a broom to trace exquisite geometric designs in the dew on a bowling green in Buckinghamshire, this book has one very clear purpose: it makes me realise I’m not as crazy as some other people out there.
c) “A Gardener’s Labyrinth – Portraits of People Plants and Places” by Tessa Traeger and Patrick Kinmouth for the National Portrait Gallery. When I first paid more than twice as much as I had ever paid for a book for a not quite perfect second-hand copy of this volume, I thought I need my head read. Until I (1) spent time with the book and (2) went onto the internet to find out what it sells for in the rest of the world… It is not so much the catalogue as ‘the book of the exhibition’ of an amazing experience I was privileged to have in the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2002. How I wish sometimes I lived in a country that could pay such homage to its gardeners!
There we are – not too much cheating. But then I realise I have not mentioned Beth Chatto, or Christopher Lloyd, or Graham Stuart Thomas, or the amazing manuals of Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix, or any of my rose books or, for that matter, any of the manuals on indigenous flowers I use on a weekly basis. Let me put it this way: if I could take my gardening books with me one day, I’d have to choose hell, because I couldn’t afford the airfreight to get them to heaven!
Oh wait: someone interpreted my “4)?” as “Which books do you still want?”
Excellent question. Although I tend to agree with Michael that most of the latest books leave (admittedly jaded) me quite cold. But there is one I will be looking out for when I am in England: a good second-hand copy of the Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury’s “The Gardens at Hatfield House” – one of the most awesome gardens I have ever visited. And then there is Ursula Buchan’s new book “The English Garden” which was the subject of an article in the December 2006 issue of “The Garden”. And what about…
Oh, and have I mentioned: I can not live without my monthly dose of “The Garden”, even if Tradescant’s Diary is no more… |
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Faith S
Perpetually learning gardener
Alabama, USA
Oh yes3 Mar '07 1:52 am
Jack is back. Love it! |
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Bambi
Slowly Learning Gardener
Kent, England
Fantastic!3 Mar '07 3:22 am
What an in-depth, informed, interesting (and lots of other words beginning with 'in') post, Jack! Thank you a) for starting this discussion (well, sort of!) and b) for answering it so comprehensively!
I myself only have one proper gardening book which is the one hubby got me for Christmas called The Gardening Year which is a lovely book, full of gorgeous photos but also useful information and lists, etc, so that would have to suffice as my answer for all except one of the questions! 
The book(s) I really really want is/are mostly all the ones I haven't already got!! I'm a huge book collector but my 'library' mainly consists of science fiction/fantasy novels and also non-fiction in the same genre, lots of lovely books on animals (with a fairly sizeable subsection on cats!), a fair amount on mythology of all kinds (although these are mainly hubby's) and some classics (Jane Austen, Conan Doyle, etc). Because I've only really 'rediscovered' gardening in the past year or so, I haven't been able to build up any kind of a collection of books (the aforementioned collection is the joint work of myself and hubby since we were both in our early teens so I've got a bit of catching up to do  ).
More specifically, I have my eye on a copy of the RHS Encyclopaedia of Gardening which I spotted a few weeks ago in my local second hand bookshop; at the time, I couldn't justify buying it as I'd already spent quite a bit that day, but I'm thinking I might pop along either Monday or Tuesday next week when I'm off work and treat myself (if it's still there  ) |
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Jack Holloway
Passionate Gardener
SEQUOIA FARM Haenertsburg South Africa
RHS Encyclopaedia3 Mar '07 8:03 am
Thanks Bambi! I think the RHS enc. is an excellent choice for book number two - it is informative AND inspirational, and it is keeping that balance that really counts as your library expands. I've been collecting gardening books for 15 years, so I definitely have a head start! My advice: know your local 2nd hand bookshops - you often find wonderful bargains there. My collection now runs to about 5m of shelf space - but there are very few I paid full price for, and very few I regret buying (in fact I flog them back if I 'outgrow' them) |
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