Summer Reading

Gardening is all about sitting in your little piece of heaven and enjoying a good read and of course what we gardeners like reading most is gardening books! (Ok among other things). So, here is a list of some of the latest gardening books which you might like to add to your list for summer reading:
 

‘Monet’s Water Lilies’

Vivian Russel’s ‘Monet’s Water Lilies’ explores the making of the water garden at Giverny and how Monet was influenced by the Japanese aesthetic. This is a beautiful book to look at with superb illustrations. For anyone who has visited Giverny it will be a wonderful reminder of a special visit and for those who have not a voyage of discovery into this special garden. The author tells the story of the water lilies’ role as a central source of Monet’s artistic inspiration and describes the making of the water garden, bringing exciting insights into his work as both gardener and painter. Reading this book is a wonderful excursion into Monet’s world and garden – read it in your garden and feel its serenity wash over you. Enjoyed every minute of it. Excellent value for money. Published by Frances Lincoln Ltd., in paperback at £9.99.

’50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plants’

In a busy lifestyle, maintaining your garden in an easy way is paramount. In this book, garden designer, Tracy Disabato-Aust, provides us with a collection of 50 show-stoppers, including some of the toughest plants that anyone can grow. She has chosen plants with long lasting blooms, architectural form and texture and also those which are drought-resistant. It has an easy-to-follow presentation, good photographs and straightforward text. Originally for the American market, this book contains much to interest the European gardener. Published by Timber Press at £9.99.

 

 

‘High-Impact, Low-Carbon Gardening’

For gardeners who are serious about green gardening practices, Alice Bowe’s book provides plenty of ideas and advice on sustainable gardening, from simple tips to intensive makeovers. Chapters deal with Improving your garden’s ecological credentials; Choosing materials for boundaries and structures, Maintaining the greener garden and Gardening with Wildlife in Mind. The main theme of this book is that you don’t have to compromise on design in order to create and maintain a greener garden.

 Published by Timber Press at £9.99.

 

 

‘Vanilla Orchids’

Ken Cameron’s ‘Vanilla Orchids’ is an interesting and unusual book. It charts the history of the world’s most popular flavour and fragrance, vanilla, from its discovery to its fascinating genetics. This is a scholarly work, illustrated with more than 100 colour photographs and presents the reader with some fascinating facts about the origins of Vanilla and in greater detail Vanilla the orchid. Chapters include the Origins and History of Domesticated Vanilla, Profiles of Select Vanilla Species and Harvesting and Processing. Many people are unaware that vanilla actually comes from an orchid and that they are among the oldest surviving members of the orchid family. The book even tempts the reader to create one’s own vanilla extract to make vanilla ice cream from Thomas Jefferson’s original recipe.

 Published by Timber Press (Hardback) at £20.00.

‘Envisioning the Garden’

Perspective in gardening is often one of the most difficult skills to master and in his book ‘Envisioning the Garden’ French garden designer, Robert Mallet, gives an excellent insight into what style to give a garden and how best to lay it out. Mallet offers a range of practical ideas that can be adapted to visually enlarge space and liberate the mind. There are good photographic illustrations and diagrams, plenty of ideas and throughout the book the lesson of using our ‘eyes’ is paramount. Trying to understand human vision and which optical effects open up broad prospects to the human spirit is covered. He also assesses how we respond to certain shapes and colours as well as other sensory associations.

So if you want to get a better understanding of planting distances, distance and light and visual traps, this is the book for you. Published by Norton, in paperback, at £24.99.

‘Late Summer Flowers’

Keeping a display going throughout the summer is made easier with this new book by Marina Christopher, ‘Late Summer Flowers’. Informative and readable, Marina’s book will help the gardener feel confident about prolonging the summer display. Co-founder of the Green Farm Nursery, Marina now runs her own nursery, Phoenix Perennial Plants in Hampshire. She chooses plants that have a late flowering season, or offer such bonuses as attractive foilage, seed heads or berries, so that you can get the best from the garden in the late summer and into autumn. There are excellent illustrations by Stephen Wooster and the useful Plant Directory is easy to follow, with comprehensive information on each plant. A really useful book for the garden library.

Published by Frances Lincoln Ltd., ‘Late Summer Flowers’ by Marina Christopher, is on sale at £16.99 paperback.

‘Public Parks: The Key to Livable Communities’

At last we have a comprehensive study of public parks and their history from Alexander Garvin in ‘Public Parks: The Key to Livable Communities’. Often overlooked in the past and sadly neglected, Public Parks are enjoying a resurgence in popularity. In this book, he explains the rationales for their existence, the forms they take and the ingredients that make successful parks. He covers every aspect of parks, from their history, evolution and planning to design, development and finance. The book includes everything that landscape architects, architects, planners, civic officials and public users need to know. For the general reader the book provides a fascinating insight into public parks and how important they are in communities. It looks at major parks in the US, UK, France, Italy and Germany.

Published by Norton in hardback priced at £45.00 - check out Amazon on the Reckless Gardener website for discounted price: www.reckless-gardener.co.uk/online-shop

‘The Bad Tempered Gardener’

I can certainly sympathise with the title of this book by Anne Wareham. There have been many times in my gardening life when I have been ‘bad tempered’. To be truthful, I am sure that there are many gardeners who, no matter how much they delight in their creations, get a little peaked at times with the day-to-day tasks that need to be performed. The book has attracted a lot of publicity and has been described by James Alexander-Sinclair as “at once entertaining, opinionated and deliciously annoying.” So be prepared to be both entertained and annoyed when you read Anne’s book – illustrated by Charles Hawes – as she describes her ‘outside housework’ and takes a swipe at ‘gushing garden stories’.  If her penned thoughts and criticisms make you think a little more reflectively about gardens – and gardeners - then her book will have achieved its aim. 

Published by Frances Lincoln @ £16.99 (available on Amazon).

As someone who has struggled with the concept of colour in the garden for decades, I found Andrew Wilson's 'Contemporary Colour in the Garden' inviting. That my little plot is 'colourful' is in no way due to my expertise of using colour as the 'powerful tool' in the gardener's armour, as Wilson suggests. It is more by accident than design, so I felt that a good text on using colour might enlighten me.


I like the way Wilson structures this book - he charts the use of colour in the garden from Gertrude Jekyll's colour-sequenced borders to Conceptualism and describes how todays plastics, resins and painted surfaces can deliver a brillance and saturation of colour that is successful in the right situation. Wilson reminds us that colour can promote an emotional response and argues for an intensive burst of colour for a short period, slowly subsiding for a more dramatic effect. Not sure I agree with that argument but I found his analytical approach to colour and how if reflects our personalities and therefore our garden very interesting. The book contains excellent colour plates and the author reflects his ideas with illustrations and examples from a range of designers including Andy Sturgeon, Tom Stuart-Smith and Cleve West.


The book is also for the American market so has American spellings - and just to be petty Jekyll is spelt wrongly on the sleeve cover - but hey, this is an excellent and stimulating book and for the first time in my life someone has actually started me thinking about colour and my approach to it.
Published by Timber Press, 'Contemporary Colour in the Garden' by Andrew Wilson, is in hardback at £20.00.


Check out the above titles on Amazon via the Reckless Gardener shop:

www.reckless-gardener.co.uk/online-shop