Saturday 2 October 2010

Expect the Unexpected

Flange Member Mark Diacono’s new book “A Taste of the Unexpected” was published last Friday.

Those, lucky enough to get their mitts on advance copies, seem wholly enamoured with it as reviews here, here and here attest.

I’ve still to have a fulsome dekko myself , but I was quite amused at the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall quote on the cover “This book will change what you grow, cook and eat forever”. I suspect Mark was too.

But it did raise in my mind the questions “Do garden books change peoples’ lives? And if so which ones? And why?”
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4 comments:

Helen/patientgardener said...

I have many gardening books and many of them rarely leave the shelf but the one or two that do are those that have made me think differently e.g. Beth Chatto on growing plants in the right location, Christo's book on colour. Books that challenge (or challenged) the mainstream populsr ethos and Mark's book does the same.

Due to him I have thrown off my non-edible grower mantle and have a number of perennial soft fruit plants on order and guttering in teh garage ready for growing micro-leaves. His book excited me about new possibilities instead of the usual edible growing instructions of planting distances, depths, disease bore bore bore, yawn yawn!

VP said...

My 'Damascus' moment was reading Christopher Lloyd's Succession Planting for Adventurous Gardeners

An irresistable combination of superb pictures and persuasive text which made me realise anything and everything is possible.

I also like the use of the word 'Adventurous'

abby jenkins said...

The gardening books I inherited from my grandfather, he was a landscape architect, are my most treasured belongings. He died long before I was born and these books are such a sweet connection for me.

I am so happy to have found your site!

The Garden Monkey said...

Hi Abby

Glad to have you here - don't be a stranger.

GMx