RHS Plants For Places by the Royal Horticultural Society
The RHS produce a number of informative and well written garden reference books that are invaluable for experienced and first time gardeners alike. Plants for places concentrates on grouping plants for very specific garden conditions. Whether they be plants for walls and paving or plants for wet damp areas you will can quickly find planting suggestions for pretty much any garden condition.
I wouldn’t recommend this book as bedside reading as it is written sparingly with a picture plus the basic factual plant information. You get two decent pictures and write ups per page and that’s tight considering the book is approximately half the cover size of a novel. The book makes up for it small cover size by preferring instead to go for an impressive 550 pages of plant information, allowing for almost 1000 plant pictures and write ups – making this book invaluable as a quick and easy to use reference for gardeners on the move. |
|
| |
|
The Garden Tree by Alan Mitchell and Allen Coombes
An excellent tree and conifer reference book this, with plenty of good sized colour pictures and considered text as well as some useful information concerning trees for different environments and garden settings.
Mitchell and Coombes both have a pedigree arboricultural background, having spent many years worked in Westonbert arboretum and Hilliers tree nursery, they obviously know their trees and that shows in the depth of information within the text. |
|
| |
|
What Plant Where by Roy Lancaster
This deceptively compact hardback in crammed with colour pictures and plant information. The book concentrates on grouping plants that suite very specific conditions or attributes. If you are looking for shrubs with silver foliage or trees for waterside planting then this book will have a page for you as well as a rather natty cross referencing index that helps you find your way about the book.
Roy Lancaster is considered amongst Britain ’s most knowledgeable plants people and this book has come back again and again for re-print and re-formatting which is a sure sign that it’s a good one. Ideal for the amateur or the more experienced. |
|
| |
|
The Ultimate Guide to Roses By Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix
Phillips and Rix apply their magical touch to the world of roses and it works again. Plenty of spot on images from Roger Phillips and pithy to the point text from Rix. The book is arranged just as it should be, working through roses by their growth type and flower colour.
A great reference for the gardener who really likes roses or anyone looking to plant up a rose garden, but perhaps a bit much for the occasional rose enthusiast. |
|
| |
|
Ornamental Shrubs, Climbers and Bamboos by Graham Stuart Thomas
This text book is exactly that, pure text. This book is not really suitable for the occasional gardener but is essential for any gardeners or horticultural students who need to source information on the myriad of cultivars and varieties of garden shrubs and climbers.
Stuart Thomas is a highly regarded plants man and has a number of classic texts under his belt of which this is but one. His plant knowledge shines through in the text which gives the kind of detailed information you just cannot get from standard plant encyclopaedias. |
|
| |
|
Trees and Shrubs for Flowers by Glyn Church
This book achieves a rare thing: a balance between plant by plant detailed and in-depth information alongside a good spread of images. This is one of a series of books on woody plants and it is this restricted range of plants covered in the book which allows the author to give plants the kind of useful details that are gardeners require. In-depth information on ideal planting conditions, type of growth as well as background of plant information makes this book so much better than the bog standard encyclopaedias, which seems to go for an expanded plant label approach. |
|
| |
|
Plant Partners by Anna Povard
This book explores that most important of subjects - successful planting combinations - or perhaps less pithily what plants look good with what and when.
This book limits itself (rather sensibly) to herbaceous plants, grasses and ferns and works through the year, working from spring and going through to late autumn. The selection of suggested combinations is limited but that’s just fine because Anna writes well and knows her stuff so there is plenty of information for the more experienced gardener to pick up. The combinations should perhaps be seen as case studies that the gardener can emulate, encouraging the gardener to work not just with flowers but with combinations between foliage, flowers and form.
This book is ideal for the keen gardener who wants to take the next logical step beyond just loving plants; the gardener who wants to start to explore aspects of garden design, by arranging and grouping plants to give meaningful and planned for displays that keep on coming as the year moves on.
|
|
| |
|
Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden by Beth Chattto
This is one of two classics from Beth - the other being the wet garden – which I don’t have but I assume is equally good! Beth has taken the ‘learn by my mistakes’ approach and has used her experiences gained battling with wayward East Anglian soils as she creates her much admired garden.
This book has many fine colour pictures as well as a wealth of text that covers pretty much all you need to know about gardening techniques on droughty soils as well as planting selections. She works back to the early days and gives sound advice about how to get going from scratch, something which many gardening books seem to skip over!
Her style of writing is easy going and refreshingly familiar, she avoids getting to wordy preferring to write almost as if she is compiling a journal to herself. This book ideal for the experienced gardener and beginner alike and would make a great gift for anyone starting out which a scorched garden that they just don’t know where to start with. |
|
| |
|
Garden Design by John Brookes
I’m always slightly suspicious of a book with such a forthright title, either the author cant be bothered to put work into something original to call their book or they are some sort of Gardening guru and can thus call the book what they like. Luckily John Brookes is the later and he has been happily re-hashing his seminal text ‘the outdoor room’ for the past thirty years, as well as providing books like this. Garden design is really useful as a sort of source book for all those people who want a little more from their gardens. It’s crammed full of ideas and some good sized pictures alongside the usual advice on how to survey your garden and draw up basic plans. It’s all here, including different types of paving and walling materials, the use of gravels and rocks, ponds and streams, timber structures and decking and advice on planting schemes.
All in all a this is a ideas great book for the beginner gardener / plants person looking to explore the demanding and expensive world of hard landscaping. |
|
| |
|
Designing Borders by Noel Kingsbury
This book is aimed at the keen gardener who wants to start getting their borders in order. Similar in some ways to planting partners only on a grander scale this book looks at planting combinations within the whole border, including shrubs and herbaceous plants alongside ground cover, grasses and ferns.
There are many fine gardening books that will help the gardener with bed design, but this particular book has a particular twist which puts it ahead of the pack, as each chapter is written by a different garden designer, which means the advice always remains fresh and inspiring.
Each designer provides a selection of border designs with specific styles or colour combinations; whether it be John Brookes giving us a tropical style summer border or Penelope Hobhouse providing a blueprint for a scented winter border in shade. The book provides whole border plans and planting lists for each of the 24 border plans within, each of which can be used either as an example or even as a blue print, not unlike a garden recipe, and all this comes alongside a wealth of information that comes across more like a collection of really in depth articles than as a book.
|
|
| |
|
Creating Small Habitats for Wildlife in your Garden by Josie Briggs
The title of this book pretty much explains exactly what it is all about. It sits amongst many other books on garden conservation but has a few key advantages; firstly it is easy to read up on specific types of habitats, such as ponds, or meadow, as each has its won chapter. Also the book has a task based approach which means you get clear instruction as to how to go about creating wildlife friendly features.
The book features plenty of pictures as well as decent line draws alongside planting suggestions that include ornamental plants alongside natives, making this book useful for gardeners who want to adjust their gardening and in the process do their bit for nature, rather than turn their garden into a nature reserve. |
|
| |
|
Bob Flowrdew’s Organic Bible: Successful Gardening the Natural Way by Bob Flowerdew
You might well know Bob from Gardeners Question Time, yes it’s that Bob – the one who seems to have an answer for any gardening question: whether ornamental gardening or allotment gardening and still he remains chemical free.
Bob’s Organic bible shares one feature with the good book; it’s big and it’s full of words, and it has to be given the breadth it covers – not just allotment or vegetable gardening - but how to look after the whole garden organically, and this is the kind of gardener that would find this book useful, a keen gardener and vegetable grower who wants to go green with their gardening. Bob believes in mixing things up; he’s and East Anglian pottager who understands techniques like permaculture and uses them in his garden to grow fruit with vegetables and herbs with flowers and shrubs.
To that end this book does seem to jump from one subject to another maybe with a high degree of fluidity – one minute your reading about pickling and then your onto how to put off cats - however Bob knows all, and even if you find the book difficult to navigate you cant help but learn an awful lot by reading this book from cover to cover! |
|