Biography

A beautiful paperback edition of this bestselling Radio 4 Book of the Week. The ancient link between the gardener and the cook is at the heart of this remarkably evocative cookbook in which Amanda Hesser relates the story of a year she spent as a cook in a seventeenth-century chateau in Burgundy and her relationship with Monsieur Milbert, the charmingly sly peasant caretaker of the chateau's kitchen gardens. A rare culinary and literary experience.

ISBN: 9781904573395

Christopher Lloyd was the grand old man of British gardening and gardening writers. From 1989 until 2006 - when he died aged 84 - he produced his Guardian column from his beloved house and garden, Great Dixter in East Sussex. His knowledge as a plantsman was prodigious, yet he wrote in an easy, direct and vigorous manner, advising, entertaining and cajoling his readers as he guided them through the gardening year. In January, he recommended the purchase of a notebook with a weatherproof cover since 'the dead season is just the moment for the fun of catalogue browsing'. Nothing was too small for his sharply observant eye: 'Paving cracks colonised with little plants add a touch of magic to the garden. Once you start experimenting, you'll get carried along. Just see.'Preparing the ground, planting for summer scent, choosing a shrub for all-year round pleasure, pruning, going organic, cottage gardens, placing a favourite hellebore, thinking about conifers or growing your own veg - all fell within his purview. And, in everything he wrote, he transmitted his huge appetite and enthusiasm for the pleasure that a garden brings.

ISBN: 9781845951078

Mark Wallington has a dream. He is going to change the face of British comedy. Unfortunately for the residents of north London, he's going to finance this dream by becoming a gardener. The result is "The Day Job", an account of a year spent working in other people's gardens: people like Mrs Fleming, who is convinced there is buried treasure in the bottom bed; Mr Walters, who is trying to create a fascist state policed by gnomes in his well-guarded plot in Gospel Oak; Mrs Glover, who is probably the most attractive women living in Britain; and poor Mr Nugent, who likes to save his urine in jam jars, and pour it over his compost. Over four seasons Wallington crosses Hampstead Heath from job to job. He survives brushes with the evil contract gardeners, who keep trying to knock him off his bicycle. He strives to impress literary agent Herman Gapp who might represent him - depending on what sort of job he does on Gapp's Alpine Terrace. He even finds time to fall for a housecleaner-cum-actor named Helen, as he becomes part of a strange band of artistes, each with a day job of their own, all waiting for that first break. This is the story of long nights spent in the back room of a pub trying to write unsolicited scripts, and of much longer days spent trying to understand the British and their strange obsession with gardening.

isbn: 0099472678

Tom Hart Dyke has a bit of a thing about plants. You might call it an obsession. You might call him certifiable, in fact. But it's a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large ramshackle country estate and an obsession with plant collecting could want for only one thing - in Tom's case it's a walled garden containing examples of plants collected from every corner of the globe. Tom's infectious enthusiasm for anything with chlorophyll in it and the hugely ambitious World Garden project he has undertaken at his family home, Lullingstone Castle, in Kent have been documented in a 12-part television series for BBC 2. The first six parts ("Save Lullingstone Castle") were shown in spring 2006, and the second six episodes ("Return to Lullingstone Castle") in spring 2007 to coincide with hardback publication.Tom's attempts to set up the World Garden aren't exactly straightforward. You might imagine, for example, that the easiest way to start preparing the ground inside the walled Elizabethan garden which he transforms into the main part of the world garden would be to enlist the help of a few people and a lot of hard digging. Well not for Tom, who enlists instead two large pigs, who do indeed do a great job of turning over the earth and fertilising it with great organic manure. But the problem is that they keep escaping into the Hart Dyke family burial plot next door where they start digging up Tom's ancestors..."The World Garden" is created to bring together a truly amazing collection of plants from every continent and so to show the global origins of the plants we all grow in our gardens. It's already establishing itself as a tourist attraction of some note as well as an educational resource. This is a book for all those who bought Tim Smit's "Lost Gardens of Heligan". It's stuffed full of fascinating botanical information as well as the story of Tom's hapless struggle to overcome huge logistical nightmares. It's a riveting, hilarious story of English eccentricity in full bloom.

ISBN: 9780552155069

Revealing the history and development of garden and landscape design in the 20th century, this book focuses on the key personalities who have shaped, and continue to shape, today's taste in gardens. From early stars such as Gertrude Jekyll, Thomas Church and Jeffrey Jellicoe to pivotal contemporary designers such as Kethryn Gustafson, Peter Walker and Jacques Wirtz, this overview aims to put the complete spectrum of garden design into perspective. It contains profiles of 56 famous garden and landscape designers, with photographs, archive pictures and plans of their work. COVER PRICE £30.00

ISBN: 9781840005127

Thomas Fairchild shook the horticultural world by revealing sexual reproduction in plants. This is a biography dedicated to the life and work of a man who could not help interferring with natural design, and as a result has given us the huge variety of flowers in our parks and gardens today.

ISBN: 9780747273592

This is a celebrated body of work, long out of print. It is based on lectures presented internationally to European and American professional societies but intended as a complete survey. The book provides comprehensive coverage of major aspects of modern landscape philosophy, design and practice and is illustrated throughout with photographs, original pictures and drawings. COVER PRICE £35.00

Ned Lutyens was England's most prolific architect since Sir Christopher Wren, and his work still enhances our lives, from the fountains of Trafalgar Square and the Cenotaph in Whitehall, to the last 'castle' built in Britain and numerous country houses among his 600 commissions. His collaboration with the garden designer Gertrude Jekyll at places such as Hestercombe in Somerset and Lindisfarne Castle can still be enjoyed by vistiors and the memorials he designed to commemorate the dead of the First World War impress all who tour the battlefields of northern France. Of these, Thiepval Memorial to the Missing is the most awesome.

Monty Don's own experience of recovering from depression and maintaining his sanity through gardening led him to set up an unusual project. In 2005 he began working with a group of disaffected young people who had never had the opportunity to work with the land, never been aware of the seasons and never eaten proper food -- let alone grown it or shared it with others. Would this experience do more to make them good citizens than the might and weight of the penal system? Looking after angry, disturbed people who resent you and almost everything else in their world proved much harder. Monty Don's extraordinarily powerful book is not only a moving and dramatic account of the work of the project but also a passionate plea for us to recognize some painful truths about modern rural.life.

isbn: 034089847x

When Barney Bardsley's husband was diagnosed with cancer he was thirty-six, and their daughter just one. The family was too young for sell-by dates - there was too much to live for. And so they did. But when he finally died, Barney felt alone and exhausted. Their savings had all gone and now she must support their child single-handedly. She would just have to take life one day at a time. She took to tending her small, scruffy allotment. Fresh air, wildlife, exercise, nature's cycles of growth and decay - she found solace in it all. This is the diary of her year in the garden. It begins with January's brisk walks, nourishing soups,and dreams of spring. In May comes a messy abundance of bluebells, tadpoles, and honeybees. In summer the sunflowers shout. And in autumn a harvest of blackberries, beans and squash. The garden's meditative atmosphere also provokes deeper musings. Barney recounts the myths and emotions associated with particular plants; she paints memories of childhood; she evokes the changes of mood as the seasons shift. Above all, she charts how her own life is slowly restored, under the garden's healing influence.

ISBN: 9780719596001

Angus McAllister, the iron-willed ruler of the gardens at Blanding's Castle who reduced his employer, Lord Emsworth, to abject pleading when he threatened to resign, and Sir Joseph Paxton, designer of the Crystal Palace, are just two examples, one fictional, one historical, of an extraordinary group of men who fluorished in the golden age of the British country house in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Toby Musgrave shows, the great head gardeners enjoyed a status and an importance that extended far beyond the walled frontiers of their fiefdoms. Only the very best of the uneducated country lads who were taken on as garden boys survived the apprenticeship of up to fifteen years, but those that did were men of strong character who had educated themselves in the sciences of botany, etymology, plant breeding, plant physiology, surveying, perspective drawing and much else. As well as ensuring that the great houses were supplied with flowers, fruit and vegetables the year round - pineapples by the dozens, peaches and apricots by the thousand were harvested from their greenhouses - they learned to cultivate the host of exotic plants that their employers imported from the ends of the earth. They invented the trade of floristry. They wrote bestselling books and published the first gardening magazines. The fame and reputation of great houses and their owners depended upon the skills of the head gardeners and competition for their services could be intense. Some tyrannised their employers to the extent that they durst not pick a flower or pluck a fruit for fear of the head gardener's displeasure. Others, like Paxton, became the friends and confidants of those who paid their wages. They ran what were, in effect, large horticultural businesses which might employ fifty or more staff and have annual expenditures that would run into the millions in today's currency.. In this scholarly and highly entertaining book, Toby Musgrave rescues the head gardeners from the backwaters of horticultural history and restores them to their rightful place as the founders of their profession. This is a fascinating study of the great Victorian and Edwardian head gardeners, a remarkable group of self-made men who transformed gardening from menial labour into a profession. It recreates the social world of the great country house gardens where staffs of up to fifty might be employed in growing produce of awe-inspiring variety in prodigious quantities. It reveals that it was the head gardeners of the past who were largely responsible for creating the science of horticulture as we know it today.

ISBN: 9781845132835

After a foreword by John Brookes himself and a brief introduction, "The Story of John Brookes" reveals all the influences that have come to bear on John's work plotting the major stages of his career. The chapter plots his growth as a garden designer, from his apprenticeship with the Nottingham Corporation Parks Department in 1954, through his work with Brenda Colvin and Sylvia Crowe in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and his setting up of his own garden and landscape design practice. His first successes in London town gardens in the 1960s are charted, as well as his key designs and educational achievements around the globe throughout his career, right up to his current position as the doyen of contemporary garden designers. The second chapter provides a fascinating insight into John Brookes' garden and landscape design work, by analysing 18 of his most significant designs and their execution. Written after extensive research, Barbara Simms summarises the history of each commission, the challenges John Brookes faced, and describes his design approach in meeting the brief. Some of John's original design sketches are reproduced and contemporary and recent photographs capture the development of each garden.

ISBN: 9781840914481

Terry Walton has kept an allotment in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales for over fifty years. He started when he was four, helping on his father's plot on the side of the mountain, cutting bracken and collecting sheep manure to feed the vegetables. He was farming his own plot at eleven and he went on to build an allotment empire, selling his vegetables and flowers to local customers. The proceeds paid for his first car, a canary yellow Ford Popular, when he was just seventeen.Then, in 2006, after half a decade of happy gardening, Terry's allotment was adopted by the Jeremy Vine Show and he became an unlikely media star. In this absorbing and entertaining memoir, Terry documents how the valley has changed over the years, his own conversion to organic gardening, and the colourful characters he meets; insterspersing his anecdotes with topical tips, family recipes and quirky line drawings. "My Life on a Hillside Allotment" is the perfect read for gardeners, allotmenteers and anyone who loves the great outdoors.

ISBN: 9780552155007

A biography of Ghillean Prance, Director of Kew Gardens, combining travel and adventure with scientific research and a range of ecological issues.

isbn: 1900347768

No nation is quite so passionate about its gardens as the British and no organization embodies that passion more than the Royal Horticultural Society. Famous for its beautiful gardens at Wisley, Rosemoor, Hyde Hall and Harlow Carr, and its spectacular flower shows, such as Chelsea, Hampton Court and Tatton Park, the RHS is a quintessentially British institution. Yet the work of the Society encompasses so much more. In this book, which accompanies a major BBC television series, Carolyn Fry goes behind the scenes at the RHS to look at the huge variety of work undertaken by its many dedicated staff and members.The Royal Horticultural Society is at the forefront of the changes that are affecting our gardens today; from experimenting with more environmentally friendly practices in its own gardens, to monitoring the impact of climate change on the pests and diseases attacking our plants. Like all keen gardeners, the RHS is also constantly seeking to improve on the design and planting of its existing gardens, and nowhere is this more apparent than at Wisley, whose spectacular new glasshouse will inspire and delight generations of visitors for years to come. In a journey that takes us behind the scenes at the RHS, Carolyn Fry introduces the reader to an exotic and colourful world full of passionate people and wonderful plants. Lavishly illustrated with beautiful photographs, this book paints a vivid portrait of the Society - the home of gardening excellence and obsession.

ISBN: 9781846072390

Following "Seeds of Change", with its investigation of the seminal role of plants in human social and economic history, Henry Hobhouse here focuses on the economic consequences of the exploitation of rubber, timber, tobacco and the wine grape - each of which enormously increased the wealth of those who dealt in them, created great new industries and changed the course of history. Ancient Rome's monopoly on wine production had huge economic and hygienic importance. Without rubber, there would have been no development of cars, buses and trucks, bicycles, waterproof clothing or even tennis and condoms. Tobacco has largely been condemned for its effects on health and its true role in history has been ignored. Tobacco has often been used in place of currency and its growth in Virginia supported a colony that produced much of the talent that made American independence possible. Timber shortages led the British Royal Navy to become dependent on American timber. The dearth of timber drove English coal mines deep, which led to the steam pumps, steam engines and, ultimately, the Industrial Revolution. This book presents the effect of minutiae on the great waves of history.

isbn: 9780330488129

In seventeenth-century Britain, a new breed of 'curious' gardeners were pushing at the frontiers of knowledge and new plants were stealing into Europe from East and West. The man responsible for introducing many of the plants to Britain at that time was John Tradescant, whose passion for collecting sent him as far as Russian Archangel, the pirate strongholds of North Africa and the battlefields of France. Tradescant's only son John was his apprentice. "Strange Blooms" tells the Tradescants' story - as gardeners, as collectors and above all as exemplars of an age that began in wonder and ended with the dawning of science. Meticulously researched and vividly evoking the drama of their lives, Jennifer Potter's book takes its readers to the edge of an expanding universe. "Strange Blooms" is a magnificent pleasure for gardeners and non-gardeners alike.

isbn: 1843543346

In "Working with the Curlew" Trevor Robinson shares his enthusiasm and joy for his work as a shepherd on the moor at Great Whernside in Yorkshire and later as a farmhand near Leominster in Hereford. He celebrates the intricate details of traditional farm life: selling rabbits at tuppence each, the village hop, sheep shearing, lambing, shire horses, haymaking, the warm welcome taste of tea on a snow-bound moor, muck spreading, cheese and bread making, trout-tickling, and killing the pig - "a quiet job well done". During one severe Yorkshire winter 600 sheep were lost, and he had to leave his job - 'the call of the curlew was still over two months away, when it came I was not there to hear it'. His new job in Herefordshire brought different skills: hedge laying, ploughing matches, haymaking, chain harrowing and crop rotation, and inevitably, the arrival of tractor and combine harvester. This book is an intimate and evocative account of an era before factory farming, when farmers worked closely with nature and the rhythm of the seasons, a smallholding could sustain a family, and there were enough small farms for a shepherd to climb the ladder to ownership.

ISBN: 9781903998342