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Gardeners' musings
It was a dark and stormy day...
Posted by: James Alexander-Sinclair, 11 December 2007, 08.51AM
Today is a wet, windy, cold, miserable, dreary, murky, depressing, cheerless, uninspiring and downright dingy day. It has not stopped raining and it always seems as if darkness is about to fall. It is the sort of day when only the very dedicated are out there gardening (or those looking for an excuse to be out of the house - sometimes rain dripping down your neck can seem a much more attractive option than ironing).
You could pass some time tidying the shed or pootling around in the greenhouse but sometimes it is good to just curl up in the warm. Assume, therefore, that there are no good films on afternoon television, your children and animals are otherwise engaged and you have a chance to read about gardens - not just look at pictures but actually read.
This is my, very brief, guide to Garden Books for a Filthy Afternoon. In no particular order but with the only criterion being that they have no pictures apart from the occasional illustration.
- More Papers from the Potting Shed by Charles Elliott. This is the second volume - I am hoping to get the first for Christmas (hint, hint). A series of essays on a whole raft of fascinating subjects ranging from worms and guano to the Chelsea Flower Show and garden machinery (via plant hunters in China and Sir Walter Scott's tree planting habits).
- The Merry Hall Trilogy. I adore these books: beautifully written, light and fluffy sagas about a new garden taken on in the 1950s by novelist Beverley Nichols. He writes very amusingly about people, places, plants and cats. Just the thing for a rainy day.
- The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan. I have always been a bit of a scientific dunce; at school my copper sulphate crystals never grew and things went downhill from there. However, every gardener needs to know a bit of botany and this book explains various things in a very entertaining fashion. The author talks about the effect humans have on such basics as the apple, the potato or the tulip. A bit of history, a bit of anecdote and just enough science.
- Sex, Botany and Empire by Patricia Fara. A fascinating little book (easily fits in the pocket if you have taken refuge in the shed) about the lives and discoveries of Carl Linnaeus (the Swedish botanist who organised all plants into groups and classifications) and Joseph Banks (who travelled with Captain James Cook and discovered many new plants). He was also one of the founders of the Royal Horticultural Society and, possibly, the only committee member of that august institution to have had his trousers stolen while carousing with the Queen of Tahiti.
There are, of course, many more. Any that you can think of that I should put on my Christmas list? Remember - no pictures allowed.
Comments
scholarsgarden
11 December 2007, 12.40PM
Helen, malvern
11 December 2007, 01.10PM
James A-S
12 December 2007, 07.10PM
JJ
14 December 2007, 07.10AM
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