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Book of Patterns,
A insightful look into the world of patterns and how they touch and influence our gardens as well as almost everything else around us. Reviewer Benjamin William Pope is head gardener at Trotton Place.
Glancing around it is not always obvious to spot a pattern, or indeed understand its significance. However, in his new book The Gardener’s Book of Patterns, author Jack Wallington recalls that a pattern is often ‘the skeleton that underpins everything’ and so ‘in understanding their logic, we can make better sense of the space around us’. With this in mind, Wallington’s book will have you looking at your most familiar surroundings from a completely different perspective.
The book begins with the definition of what constitutes a pattern, exploring its interpretation and the various forms in which it can appear. Here Wallington artfully describes how natural evolution and human mathematics work to influence and create such visual masterpieces. The pages that follow take you on a rich journey that transcends history and location, nature and culture. Numerous examples of patterns are described within the text, ranging from the microscopic organisation of
RHS THE GARDENER’S BOOK OF PATTERNS: A DIRECTORY OF DESIGN, STYLE AND INSPIRATION by Jack Wallington
Thames & Hudson, £19.95 ISBN 978-0500023273 cells in a leaf to the much larger-scale street layout of our cities. Recollections of Egyptian gardens sit alongside minimalist modernism, while exploring the use of colour, texture, repetition and perspective. Throughout, Wallington sympathetically describes the relevance and effects that these patterns have on us as humans, going further to illustrate how we can incorporate them into our own personal spaces. The book contains many engaging images, which act as points of visual inspiration while successfully emphasising the content of the text.
The Gardener’s Book of Patterns is a comprehensive study of its subject, touching on everything from plant detail and garden layout, through to the choice of outdoor furniture and furnishings. The result is an extensive collection of inspirational images and thoughtful words that will get you reaching for a pencil and paper to begin planning your next garden project.
Whether labourer’s cottage or aristocratic mansion, the life of the 17th-century household depended absolutely on the garden.
Reviewer Ambra Edwards is a writer and garden historian.
In tracing the importance of the garden to the 17th-century household, social historian Margaret Willis opens an intimate window on the domestic life of the period. Her sources range from the diaries of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys and the herbals of Gerard and Culpeper to parish records and farm accounts. Most fascinating are the manuscript books kept by women, compiled over decades and passed from mother to daughter, packed with household tips and recipes for everything from ‘kissing comfits’, to sweeten the breath, to optimistic prophylactics against the plague.
Women’s work, Willes observes, was never-ending – growing herbs for the pot, providing safe and wholesome beverages at a time when water was lethal, keeping home, clothes and family clean and sweet-smelling (oddly, stale urine seems to have been a key ingredient) – and supplying rudimentary medical care.
One chapter, an alphabetical list of herbs, is underpowered and (surprisingly for Willes) not always accurate, but as soon as she returns to her narrative, recounting the medicinal, cosmetic and domestic uses of plants, she is back on form, regaling us with hideous recipes involving eviscerated earthworms and ground-up snails, a cure for tinnitus (there is none today) and a novel way of treating headaches by stuffing pellitory up your nose.
Some detail is familiar – bluebells being used to stiffen ruffs. Much more is surprising. Fruit ciders are not a hipster invention: John Evelyn was a devotee. Houseleeks proved an effective remedy for gunpowder burns. Home-grown hemp was the poor man’s substitute for window glass.
A pacy text is supported with lively and well-chosen illustrations, ranging from a hand-coloured 1597 edition of Gerard’s Herbal to informative Dutch genre scenes (spot the fashionable artichokes among the feathered fowl) and delightful watercolours from the Tradescants’ nursery catalogue.
HYDRANGEAS:
BEAUTIFUL VARIETIES FOR HOME AND GARDEN by Naomi Slade
Pavilion Books, £25 ISBN 978-1911641230
Proof that in what is becoming a crowded field there is still room for accessible growing advice underpinned by expertise.
Reviewer Hilary Brown is a freelance writer and allotmenteer.
This new addition to the Kew Gardener’s Guide series sees Kew’s kitchen gardener share her considerable knowledge and passion for growing veg to great effect.
A comprehensive introduction covers everything from sowing to harvesting, and might be daunting but for the fact that it is straightforward and readable. And it’s not just a case of repeating received wisdom – advice is backed up by explanation. There’s a good reason for not repotting a seedling into a container much larger than its current pot, for example, as the extra growing medium will retain water and cause the roots to rot.
The book excels in the main section on individual crops. With generally a page per vegetable, each entry contains pull-outs highlighting notable cultivars, interesting facts (historically in Balkan countries, hairy bean leaves were strewn on the floor of infested homes to trap bedbugs) or useful tips (keep cauliflower heads white by covering them with their leaves
THE KEW GARDENER’S GUIDE TO GROWING VEGETABLES: THE ART AND SCIENCE TO GROW YOUR OWN VEGETABLES by Helena Dove
Frances Lincoln, £12.99 ISBN 978-0711242784 while they are developing).
The text is clear and concise, enhanced by illustrations from Kew’s botanical collection and attractive plant label graphics containing pertinent information such as spacing, hardiness and edible parts.
Dove also reveals an interest in unusual crops by including intriguing choices such as sea kale and oca alongside old favourites.
Peppered throughout are projects on a wide range of topics. Some, such as creating an asparagus bed, will appeal to seasoned growers. Others, such as growing windowsill salads, will interest those with limited space. In keeping with the zeitgeist, there’s an emphasis on sustainability, with suggestions such as lining planting holes with comfrey leaves to negate the need for compost.
With the addition of a troubleshooting section and details of what to do when, this book will be an invaluable guide for aspiring growers and a trusted reference source for old hands.
A practical and enthusiastic re-appraisal of an established approach to gardening, combining cottage garden and New Perennial styles. Reviewer Rory Dusoir is a Kew-trained gardener and writer.
What’s known as the New Perennial Movement has lately achieved an indelible impact on how we view gardens.
The style, while colourful in season, emphasises the importance of plant form in all its stages of growth, with a particular emphasis on herbaceous perennial plants. It derives integrity from its adherence to ‘natural’ plant forms, eschewing any overtly hybridised cultivars with disproportionately large or ‘double’ flowers. Perhaps most importantly it has achieved a huge shift of emphasis in seasonality, with autumn and winter both much more important seasons than spring, and the admiration of dead and decaying plants now a firmly established part of the orthodoxy.
While this style, being comparatively low maintenance and low impact, answers well to the problems of large-scale landscapes, what of the domestic gardener, anxious to squeeze as much colour and joy as possible from a small plot? What of spontaneity and experimentation, or the gardener who wishes to indulge their passion in roses, for instance? The enduring strength of the cottage gardening style is its eclecticism and fluidity. Author Greg Loades celebrates these aspects of the classic English gardening style without turning his back on the modernising influence of Piet Oudolf and his cohort.
In The Modern Cottage Garden, Loades advocates incorporating elements of modern planting style into the traditional cottage garden idiom, including some of its key plants and an appreciation of plant structure that persists into the winter.
Loades writes in a lively and enthusiastic style, using many a fetching simile to illustrate a point. This is a practical book, well-founded in personal experience, and will empower its readers to indulge their passions and experiment, no matter how limited a space they have at their disposal.