Hedge Man

I never read the late John Cushnie's gardening column in The Telegraph, so I couldn't resist the offer of a review copy of Hedge Man, a 'best of' volume from the publisher last year :)

It's a surprisingly thin volume (at 198 pages) for someone who was renowned for his mastery of words, but what's there is a treasure trove. I've discovered a man who had a marvellously dry sense of humour and an economy with words which still manages to be detailed. I particularly love the first couple of sentences from the first entry entitled Talking sheds:

There are a lot of things that a gardener needs, but the two most important are patience and a shed. Patience will make you a better gardener, but a shed will allow you to make a better garden.

I can imagine many of you are yelling what about a greenhouse? at this right now, but it only serves to illustrate another gift Cushnie possessed: the ability to make you think as well as chuckle, even when writing about some of the more mundane aspects of gardening.

Most of the entries sit firmly in the 'How To' camp, indeed the longest sub-division of the book is called Practical Cushnie. There's plenty more in this line to be found in the Plants and Cushnie Design sections too. However, all this practicality doesn't result in a dull book as humour and a lightness of touch win the day. It's a dippable or devour in one sitting kind of volume, depending on your mood.

The final section is called Cushnie comment and comprises two of his New Year Resolution (NYR) articles for 2007 and 2010. I'm rather concerned about the 2007 one as it hardly deals with NYRs at all: instead he muses on changes to Gardeners' World (it seems some things never change!) and what he'd like to see at Chelsea in 2005. This latter piece is a little confusing in view of the main title and did make me wonder if some of the articles are made up from a number of original entries.

I believe the 2010 NYRs should have been the book's final article instead of the penultimate one. Sadly Cushnie died before 2010 commenced and so didn't even have the chance to start on them. Surely they would have been a more fitting final tribute than the confusing 2007 entry and would leave us pondering on how the garden's looking now? It'd be a good call to action for us all as well - get going on all those dreamed of projects and ideas before it's too late.

Apart from that minor gripe (and the relatively thin volume), it's a very enjoyable read.

And for those of you wanting to know more about the man, here's the award winning Gardeners' Question Time John Cushnie tribute broadcast from last year.

Pleasing Perennials: The Curious Gardener

New gardening books come out every month, and all of them are competing for shelf space, attention and sales. I get sent a fair few to review, and most are well-written and informative and of interest to their target audience. Very few, however, have the individuality - the sense of bringing something new to the genre - that guarantees them a space on the shelf for life, and so I thought I would dig out and celebrate the books with which I have an emotional connection. These are the books I would replace if there was a fire (I don't have any books that I would rescue from a fire!).

First up is 'The Curious Gardener', which brings together three of German gardener Jurgen Dahl's works. Jurgen Dahl is (sadly) no longer with us, but I have the hardback edition of this book, which was the first place these three works appeared in English translation. A new paperback edition was published earlier this year.

There aren't that many photographs, and the ones it has are black and white. This is a book for readers - the text itself is what's important here, and it's well worth taking the time to read it.

The first work, "Gardening Virtues and Botanical Surprises", takes us through the four seasons in Dahl's eclectic garden. Dahl grew each and every plant because of a joy in all plants - he wanted to meet each species individually, get to know them and share his fascination. Some grew happily in his garden (in the author photograph he is all but hidden by an enormous gunnera). Others didn't, and Dahl kept a pot of old plant labels in remembrance of plants past.

In "The Stinking Garden" we meet all kinds of scented plants, from the common and pleasant scents of the mint family to plants that mimic body odour, or use their scents to attract prey. The same sense of wonder is present for every plant, fair or foul - Dahl certainly doesn't play favourites.

"How to eat a lily" is more concerned with edible plants, including blue potatoes, edible weeds and blackberries. There is a discussion about the longevity of seeds and notes about the beauty of faded seed heads.

His writing, even in translation, is so inspiring that it makes you want to rush out and check on whether a plant in the garden has started flowering, set seed or simply responded to a change in the weather. Your gardening To Do list will become ever longer as Dahl suggests plants to try and ideas will pop into your head whenever you dip into the book.

Everything is an experiment that can be repeated by the reader. Which is not to say that Dahl writes as a dispassionate, scientific researcher. His opinions are clear, whether he is talking about ground cover plants, weeds, or his hay collection. He obviously loved trying new and unusual plants, and spent a lot of time reading through old horticultural records.

This is not a conventional gardening book, because Dahl was not a conventional gardener. He was a man who had a life-long love affair with plants, and who tried to share some of his wonder and fascination through his writing. The photographs may only be in black and white, but Dahl's plants will shine in your imagination and send you outside to find the magic for yourself.

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Book details (by request)
'The Curious Gardener', By Jurgen Dahl.
Paperback edition from Timber Press, Mar 2010, ISBN 978-1604692020
Available from Amazon UK.

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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Book Review - The Alternative Kitchen Garden an A-Z - Emma Cooper

Another proud moment as Flange member Emma C's book came out last month.

Many thanks to Frankie for the review and to Emma herself for organising the review copy and apologies for my tartdiness in posting it:

The Alternative Kitchen Garden an A-Z

Emma Cooper

As a not particularly successful food grower myself, I was really keen to get my hands on this book. I was not disappointed. Emma’s encouraging, have-a-go approach to gardening is evident on every page, encouraging the reader to follow suit. The introduction gives a short background on how her kitchen garden evolved from a neglected, urban Oxfordshire back garden into a productive plot and media HQ.

The A-Z itself is an eclectic collection of Emma’s interests and crops, including both her triumphs and failures, which will endear her to many other real gardeners. I could sympathise with Emma’s saffron trials and after reading her book, will never attempt to grow any Tiger Nuts! I also found a surprising amount of useful information and a desire to find out more about unusual vegetables. If nothing else, the Real Seeds Company will be added to my list of suppliers next year.

My one niggle is reserved for the publisher’s lay out. For a ‘green’ book there are far too many half empty pages, which could have been filled. I often found myself wondering if there could have been a kale or dolmades recipe to fill the blank space at the end of an entry.

With stiff competition this autumn from the likes of Nigel Slater, The RHS and Bob Flowerdew all bringing out books timed for the Christmas market. I hope that this neat little book will find a space on the bookshelves.

Veg Plot Frankie

Review - The Angel Tree

For summer holidays when I was a kid I used to pack more books than clothes – at least one for every day of the trip.

Earlier this year, as a gardening obsessed adult I packed only six books to last six weeks.

The first one I opened was a 'gardening travelogue', which seemed appropriate. Alex Dingwall-Main's 'The Angel Tree' follows the author on his travels across the Mediterranean as he tries to find the oldest living olive tree and bring it back to France for a very rich client.

Alex Dingwall-Main is an English garden designer, living in France. At the beginning of the book he has a serendipitous meeting with a local chateau owner. In what is written as a rather haphazard attempt to design something impressive enough to win the client over, Alex suggest an ancient olive tree for the courtyard. The idea of owning something so noble proves irresistible, and Alex is hired to track down the oldest olive tree that will survive in the local climate (Provence not being the ideal location for olives because of the cold winters), uproot it and bring it back.

You're then taken on what is meant to be an entertaining romp as the author travels across France, Spain, Italy and Greece in search of a 'millÈnaire' – an olive tree over a thousand years old. There are certainly plenty of characters to meet along the way, although the only likeable ones are the trees themselves.

I won't spoil the ending for anyone who wants to read the book – the quest is finally successful, but not in the way that you would expect. In fact, in the final chapters the author and his client redeem themselves slightly; most of the time they come across as entitled buffoons who don't give a monkey's for anything other than making an impression.
With its open-ended budget and a lavish carbon footprint, I found this story to be unrealistic and very annoying. If you added in some high-end CGI and a car chase in the closing scenes then it would make a passable Hollywood blockbuster. The author rarely remembers that this is a gardening travelogue, but occasionally throws in the Latin names of some of the plants he walks past on his travels. There is a separate section at the back with details about olive cultivation and the production of olive oil, but there's very little useful information here for people attempting to grow olives in the British climate (although it's heartening to read that olive trees seem to be virtually unkillable).

All-in-all I would classify this as a book to be read while the sangria is making your head fuzzy and you've got sand between your toes. Leave it in the hotel when you leave. Better by far was my second choice – Elspeth Thompson's Urban Gardener.

Emma Cooper

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Book Review - Gardeners’ World Top Tips – A Treasury of Garden Wisdom

Victoria contacted me earlier this week – would I like to have her review copy of the latest Gardeners’ World book published last week? She suggested it would be a suitable prize for my Open Garden fundraiser, so how could I refuse such an offer? I also rather liked the idea of reviewing the book for Flange readers seeing The Garden Monkey’s rather busy at the moment.

First impressions are favourable. It’s hardback with a rather jolly dustjacket harking back to simpler times in the garden. Even the snail on the cover looks friendly. It’s written by Louise Hampden – Gardeners’ World’s producer and announces itself as ‘Hints, tips and wisdom from TV’s longest running and most popular gardening programme…’ I met Louise very briefly at Gardeners’ World Live in June when we exchanged pleasantries during the filming of Gardeners’ World. She’s worked on the programme for the past 10 years, so knows the programme and the last few crops of presenters inside out. According to the press release that came with the book, it’s a tie-in with a 20 part daytime TV series due to start on 1st December. However, there’s no mention of this fact in the book itself.

It’s divided into 5 chapters – Flower Power, Food, Design, Pots and Gardens. Flower Power is further divided by season and looks at how to ensure year-round floral interest in the garden. Several of the book’s shortcomings quickly become apparent: a lot of the content whilst interesting, isn’t really tips at all – there’s potted histories, quotations from famous gardeners (not necessarily Gardeners’ World presenters) and plant trivia. The ‘Top Tips’ themselves (helpfully boxed, with a different font and background, so you can’t miss them) are often pitched at the pre-beginner level. I suspect most of the gardeners whom I believe this book is aimed at will feel a bit short changed. For a book that’s meant to be culled from 40 years of Gardeners’ World wisdom, it’s strange there’s not more tips to share, nor is there much in the way of anecdotes or content attribution to the presenters. I often found the best ‘Top Tips’ were in the non-boxed sections, for example there’s an organic slug repellent recipe I’d love to try using garlic. And that’s when I met another of the book’s shortcomings – there isn’t an index to find the useful bits at a later date. So if I want to return to the book in the spring to cook up my garlic slug repellent, I’ll have to remember the recipe’s in the Flower Power chapter, in the Summer section and somewhere in the part called Dealing with Slugs and Snails. Hmm.

The chapters on Food, Design and Pots are in a similar vein. I thought the Design chapter was the strongest and most coherent in its content and advice – probably because it’s documenting a journey from start to finish with some clearly signposted ‘things to think about’ along the way. In contrast, the Gardens section was woefully inadequate at just 4 pages. This is the chapter meant to reflect the hundreds of gardens and nurseries Gardeners’ World has visited and should give readers some must-see places to explore later. However, there’s no mention of Kew, nor the National Trust or English Nature. You could argue these are obvious, but if that’s so, then why mention the RHS gardens or the Yellow Book? The NCCPG is mentioned fleetingly, but no contact details are given if anyone wants to find out where to visit a garden with a specific plant collection. There’s two pages of suggested gardens to visit and I liked the way this is divided into places reflecting the other chapters of the book. However at two pages in length and with 10 sub-headings it means many readers won’t have anywhere to go nearby if they want to visit one with for example, Winter interest. Simply doubling the length of this chapter, with a better researched set of websites and contact details would have made it a much more useful resource.

You may think I don’t rate this book from what I’ve said so far. However, much of it is utterly charming. The plentiful line drawings are lovely and much of the information is interesting. I did have quite a few ‘Oh I didn’t know that’ moments which kept me turning the pages. It would have been so much better if the book had tried to be good at one thing instead of two. As a reference book it fails, but as a miscellany to dip into at bedtime, it works.

VP

Book Review - The Thrifty Gardener – Alys Fowler

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book. My expectations were of a book full of sensible, down to earth advice and ideas and I wasn’t, in the end, disappointed.

The book is divided into 9 chapters which lead the novice gardeners from ‘No garden gardening’ to pruning and propagating and includes a directory of easy veg and flowers to grow. However, unlike other gardening books I have encountered this one had a very urban and modern feel and certainly engaged with society’s current preoccupation with recycling and sustainability as shown in the section on ‘skip diving’ which rather surprised provincial me!! At first I though I wasn’t going to be able to engage with the book, being naturally drawn to those coffee table books with lots of sumptuous English country garden. I thought, as it was aimed at beginners, it couldn’t teach me anything new – how presumptuous of me!

Alys’ wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm shines through on every page as does her non-nonsense personality which is humorously demonstrated in the section about DIY tools ( I told you it wasn’t your normal gardening book!). Alys says that you need to find someone to teach you how to use tools and in her experience this shouldn’t be someone who "complain(s) about your driving skills" but rather "someone you are never going to go to bed with" – such sensible advice!

Whilst the book contains a number of DIY projects such as building your own compost bin and wormery, it also contains a lot of sensible gardening advice – some of which goes against everything else you will have read, such as her opinion that shop bought soil testing kits are a complete waste of time and money, the alternative either send a soil sample to a lab or use a home grown test kit complete with red cabbage leaf! I found Alys’ honest approach very refreshing and humorous.

Having encouraged the novice gardener to move from container gardening (which includes tips on growing Avocado and Papaya plants) into garden gardening the books then gives some tips on preparing soil, sowing and propagating and concludes with coping with gluts and how to make herb teas. This last section came as a surprise and this was one element of the book which I found frustrating. It touched on many subjects but not in great detail and you were left turning the page and finding yourself going in a totally different direction. I think there is a huge potential for Alys to develop some of the smaller sections in the book into a range of excellent companion books.

Although this book claims to be aimed at beginners, and it certainly doesn’t assume any pre-knowledge, taking trouble to explain various terminology, I do think that most gardeners would find it a welcome edition to their literature collection. If nothing else it makes you re-look at things you have taken for granted and introduces you to new points of view which can never be a bad thing.

Having started thinking I could learn nothing new from the book I am now itchy for spring to arrive so I can have a go at growing my own chickpea plant and I don’t even like chickpeas.

Helen

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Book Review - On Guerilla Gardening

I suspect Richard Reynolds would be a formidable opponent at Risk. His - is it too early to use the term ‘cult book’ yet? - On Guerrilla Gardening is certainly a valuable vade mecum for anybody interested in illicitly improving the local landscape, but it also contains the kind of tactical and strategic savvy that you normally associate with a Garry Kasparov or a Ferdinand Foch.

Indeed, while growing things is at the heart of what Reynolds is writing about (“politics and sustainability aside, the reason I became a guerrilla gardening is because I love gardening”), there is a very strong emphasis placed on the ‘guerrilla’ aspect of his sallies: the book is liberally strewn with canny quotes from fighting folk such as Mao Tse-tung and Che Guevara, he talks knowledgeably about fellow ‘troops’ making ‘sorties’ and ‘strikes’ in the middle of the night to cause ‘shock and awe’, and he recognises the vital importance of propaganda – especially blogging and other social media – in winning hearts and minds.

The book - a comfortable size which uses photographs well and has attractive endpapers - is divided into two sections, The Movement and The Manual. The first part explores the philosophy behind nipping out in the middle of the night to turn untended urban roundabouts, unloved medians and even Guantanamo Bay into small oases of delight. Reynolds also gives us a whistlestop tour through the movement’s history from the time of the 17th century Diggers (hats off to Gerrard Winstanley) through the turbulence of flower power to the posturing of millennium protestors.

In part two he gives general advice on what to plant, where to plant it (or in some cases, lob your homemade seed bomb) and what to wear. I suspect much of the horticultural part of this section will not be a revelation to most of the Garden Monkey’s readership, but for the many quite keen yet spectacularly ignorant gardeners such as myself it is very useful indeed.

There’s much more to this call to arms though. Despite largely positive notices in the national press, reviewers seem to have largely missed or ignored a central aspect of this book. Reynolds himself claims that guerrilla gardeners’ main enemies in the 21st century are scarcity and neglect, Dickensian evils not usually associated with gardening handbooks but which he believes require radical solutions. While he specifically states that his warriors should act legally, On Guerrilla Gardening feels like a handbook to non-confrontational campaigning and a manifesto for social change. What we plant is important, he argues, but so is why we plant it, whether it’s for aesthetic, economic or health reasons. It’s not surprising to discover the title and chapter headings are set in a type designed by William H Page, not only a lover of ornamental gardening but also a community activist. For this reason, it’s likely to find a place on my bookshelf between Tom Hodgkinson’s How To Be Idle and Antonia Swinson’s You Are What You Grow.

Alex

Thanks Alex - More on Guerilla Gardening can be found here