HOE! HOE! HOE!
DAHLIAS: BEAUTIFUL VARIETIES FOR HOME AND GARDEN by Naomi Slade (Pavilion, €35)
TWENTY years ago, dahlias were r elegated to t he a l l o t ment, dismissed as too vulgar and brash for the garden. But tastes have changed and, today, these fabulously blowsy and colourful late- summer flowers are highly prized.
For journalist and broadcaster Naomi Slade, dahlias ‘ooze personality and character’.
From the tens of thousands of cultivars that exist, she chooses 65 of her favourite dahlias, each one ravishingly photographed.
There’s the nude-coloured Café Au Lait, ‘ as rich as a cream liqueur on ice’; burgundy-and-white Tartan, ‘an Eton mess of a dahlia’; and who could resist pink Fascination, ‘ an eyepopping hottie’?
If you haven’t already fallen in love with dahlias, this book will surely convert you, just in time to order your tubers in spring. (White Lion, €35) THE British Isles has around 6,000 islands — more than a hundred of them i nhabited — and, where t here are people, inevitably there are gardens.
This lavishly illustrated book — you can almost smell the sea tang coming off the sun-drenched photographs — profiles 13 gardens on islands as far apart as Anglesey, Guernsey, the Isle of Wight, Orkney and Mull.
Island- dwellers create beautiful gardens, despite the gales and salt spray, chucking seaweed on their compost heaps and revelling in their wonderful vistas.
They use heavyweight garden furniture, so their seating doesn’t blow away, and, when their garden floods, they simply shrug and get on with replanting.
If you dream of escaping from it all, this is the book to transport you. THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DR WARD & OTHER AMAZING GARDENING INNOVATIONS by Abigail Willis (Laurence King,
€18.20)
IF YOU have ever marvelled at a towering Douglas fir, spare a thought for intrepid Scottish botanist David Douglas, after whom the tree is named. His plant-seeking career ended ingloriously in 1834, when he fell into a wild bullock trap in Hawaii and died.
Abigail Willis’s lively gallop through assorted horticultural topics is full of such interesting nuggets, as she zips from the history of lawnmowers and the modern trend for guerrilla gardening to the exploits of Victorian plant-hunters.
Dip into the book and you’ll learn that Hampton Court’s glorious maze was almost ripped out in the 18th century — it was saved only by royal command — and that Americans use 270 billion gallons of water a week on their lawns.
And who knew that the world’s most northerly allotments are in Rovaniemi, Finland, the official home of Santa Claus? BRILLIANT AND WILD by Lucy Bellamy (Pimpernel, €28) IF LUCY Bellamy seems familiar, it’s because she was a contestant on The Great British Bake Off in 2013. As well as being an ace baker, she is an expert gardener and now edits the upmarket magazine Gardens Illustrated.
This charming book i s aimed squarely at inexperienced gardeners with a modest budget who want quick results.
The key, she explains, is choosing the right combination of plants. Here, they are helpfully arranged largely by shape, so you can imagine how they will look throughout the year.
‘It’s difficult to feel connected to nature and the seasons if we only experience them through the car window,’ says Lucy.
Having a garden makes life better. Like all the best gardening books, this one leaves you itching to get out in your own patch. THE FLOWERPOWERED GARDEN by Andy Vernon (Timber Press,
€25.90)
WRITER and TV producer Andy
Vernon fell in love with park bedding schemes as a boy. He reinterprets carpet bedding here — vibrantly coloured plants that will usually only last for a season — for today’s gardeners, with planting combinations that are equally effective in a large garden or a tiny patio.
‘There is no shame in being overthe-top,’ he proclaims. ‘Protest with petunias, fight back with fuchsias!’
His colour combinations are eyepopping: zingy greens, browns and blacks, reds, yellows and pinks and every shade of sultry red and purple.
Follow his advice and your garden will be an explosion of colour next summer.
‘Knock yourself out,’ Andy advises, ‘and make it marvellous.’ WALLED GARDENS by Jules Hudson (National Trust, €23.80) FOR archaeologist and TV presenter J ul e s Hudson, walled gardens are ‘a space of enchantment, an escape from all that is burdensome in the world outside’.
Originally ‘private supermarkets’ designed to produce enough fruit and vegetables to support the household throughout the year, they gradually — through competition between country estates keen to flaunt their wealth and horticultural expertise — became more and more elaborate, with extravagant displays of flowers as well as produce.
Profiles of walled gardens including Plas Newydd on Anglesey, The Lost Gardens of Heligan i n Cornwall and Winston Churchill’s home at Chartwell in Kent trace the way they have evolved.
The photographs are mouthwatering — it’s no wonder that walled gardens are now so highly prized by those who dream of having their own private enclosed space overflowing with fruit and flowers.