Book Review: "RHS Chelsea Flower Show: The First 100 Years: 1913-2013"

I read this wonderful book last May, but I didn't finish writing my review until after the 2015 Chelsea Flower Show had finished, and I felt that it was no longer topical to include in my blog at that point. But I found my review in my draft posts recently, now that the excitement of the 2016 Chelsea Flower Show is beginning -- my husband and I just finished watching the first of the many episodes that will cover this grand event during this week for those of us who aren't lucky enough to attend in person.

Being American, until last year I had little idea what the Chelsea Flower Show even was, other than a presumably desirable event included in garden tour packages advertised in magazines like "The English Garden" and "Gardens Illustrated."

But my total ignorance has ended, due to two educational sources: 1. the BBC coverage of last year's show that I watched on YouTube last May, and 2. this book that was published right before the 2014 Show, "RHS Chelsea Flower Show: The First 100 Years: 1913-2013" by Brent Elliott (a review copy of which I requested and received from publisher Frances Lincoln because of my interest in garden history).

For those American readers who still exist in my former state of complete ignorance, the Chelsea Flower Show is a really big deal in England. Chelsea is an affluent district in central London, and every May the Royal Horticultural Society holds a five-day-long Flower Show in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement and nursing home.

The Show in its modern format comprises three main areas:

1. the huge tent known as the Floral Marquee under which plant growers and breeders exhibit amazingly impressive displays of their plants
2. outside the tent are large and small Show Gardens designed by garden designers
3. and a Sundries area has display greenhouses, garden tools and books, and specialist plant societies' displays

The garden designers and plant exhibitors hope to win a gold or silver-gilt award from the RHS judges, and there is great media attention for the winners, particularly for garden design winners. Also receiving much coverage is the visit of members of the royal family on the first day of the show. After the first day, the show is open to the public and over 150,000 people purchase limited-availability tickets each year, and the BBC runs morning and evening television coverage of the Show on all five days. The Chelsea Flower Show is probably most likened to an upscale, national-level version of our American state fairs (in my home state of Iowa, the Iowa State Fair is a pretty big deal, with over a million attending and nightly television coverage of fair activities).

But again, I knew none of this until I read this book, which covers the history of the world's most prestigious flower show. Brent Elliot's book is filled with historic photos that I found fascinating -- I love old garden photos, and those chosen by the author and editors do a great job of showing the gardening and societal trends of each decade. (I have poorly scanned a few representative images from the book in an attempt to show how interesting the illustrations are.)

The first chapter covers the 19th century origins of the show: The Horticultural Society of London held its first flower show in 1827 in Chiswick, which proved to be too far away from London before railroads reached it and the show was eventually a financial disaster which took years to recover from. In 1861, the renamed and re-organized Royal Horticultural Society moved their flower show to a closer site in Kensington. This was successful for a few years, but London's pollution resulted in yet another move in 1888 to the garden areas of the Inner Temple (where English barristers are traditionally housed). This site lasted until 1912, when the RHS finally ended up at the current, much larger Chelsea site.

A painting showing the 1866 International Horticultural Exhibition in
Kensington, a fore-runner of the Chelsea Flower Show.

After staging a successful international horticultural exhibition on the Chelsea grounds in 1912, the first RHS flower show (called the Great Spring Show) was held there in 1913, and after the First World War, the Great Spring Show was revived in 1919. During the 1920s and 1930s, the show grew in size and the gardens and exhibits became more elaborate (rock gardens enjoyed a peak of popularity during this period and drew huge crowds, while a campaign against topiary and traditional formal gardens was waged).

A rock garden under construction for the 1935 Chelsea Flower Show. Looking on are three of the "Pensioners," residents of the retirement home at Royal Hospital Chelsea. 

And probably the most famous indoor exhibit the show has ever enjoyed was shown in 1929, when Mrs. Sherman Hoyt of California staged a tableau of Californian desert plants, which wowed the British audience with its elaborate detail and exotic plant species (Interestingly to Iowans, Mrs. Sherman Hoyt had an Iowa connection; her mother was a niece of Hoyt Sherman, a prominent 19th-century Des Moines banker, and his brother, Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman.)

Mrs. Sherman Hoyt's famous 1929 California desert display with painted backdrops ushered in a new level of plant displays. After the show, the whole display was purchased by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

The Chelsea Flower Show was discontinued after Britain declared war in 1939, when the RHS put its efforts into its Dig for Victory campaign. The Flower Show was not able to resume until 1947, and even then with a reduced number of exhibitors, but by the early 1950s, the RHS was able to afford a larger tent as interest and attendance increased. In the 1950s and '60s, the once-popular rock gardens began their decline and many of the new gardens featured historic garden styles inspired by Spanish courtyards and French potagers.

A Spanish-style garden by the Sociedad de Amigos del Paisaje y Jardines for the 1952 show.

The 1950s also saw the beginning of modernistic garden styles epitomized by the 1959 The Times' Garden of To-morrow, which featured labor-saving shrubs, groundcovers and paving, as well as a futuristic radio-controlled lawnmower. Also demonstrated were developments in the use of plastic containers and stainless steel garden tools, which were indeed truly revolutionary developments that modern gardeners take for granted.

A labor-saving tree and shrub garden designed by Paul Temple for the 1964 show.

By the 1960s and 1970s, earlier amateur exhibitors were being replaced by professional growers and large garden centers, as gardeners were becoming accustomed to buying container-grown plants (made possible by plastic pots), rather than growing from specialists' seeds. Bonsai was on the ascendance in popularity, and garden designers, who had previously not been listed with garden sponsors in entries, were becoming celebrities in their own right.

Professionals preparing the impressive floral displays for a 1960s-era show inside the Great Marquee (tent). 

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Show was forced to deal with overcrowding as attendance rose to new heights. And the 1990s were marked by controversy over garden styles: in earlier years, it had been the garden modernists who complained that traditional styles were boring and irrelevant, but by the turn of the century it was the general public who lamented that many awards were being given to designs that hardly appeared to be real "gardens" (designed arrangements of live plants), but more like natural, uncultivated settings or areas of mostly paved hardscaping.

By the turn of the 21st century, many of the garden designs for the show were centered on demonstrations of sustainability, social conscience or trendy causes. Many are based on "extravagant metaphors which only become intelligible after reading the programme note," according to the author of the book, such as gardens that have attempted to represent the blood circulatory system or shock waves. Gardens now mostly seem to be fairly modernistic in design, although cottage gardens and other revivalism of historic garden styles are also represented.

The Wasteland Garden by Kate Gould for the 2013 show includes such objects as a storm drain, mattress springs, lumps of concrete and pieces of machinery, in her evocation of a "derelict pumping station." Not my idea of a desirable garden, which to me should be a place of beauty, but I suppose it does have some plants in it, and it did receive a Gold Medal....

This 1996 Paradise Garden by Bunny Guinness is more my style, and some of the prettier modern styles filled with lush plantings are beautiful to see.

At any rate, "RHS Chelsea Flower Show, The First 100 Years: 1913-2013" takes readers on a fascinating tour through history -- not just through the history of the Chelsea Flower Show, but also through changes in popular garden styles as well as through the greater cultural history of England in the twentieth century.

Anyone interested in garden history, English gardens or modern British history should be familiar with this cultural icon of the English garden world, and Brent Elliott's book is just the introduction needed by American gardeners. The photos alone are endlessly enjoyable, and Elliot's narration of the story of the Chelsea Flower Show provides just enough background for the photos, but not so much as to prove dull to general readers. Highly recommended for readers who want to know more about the biggest flower show on earth.

And even if you're not interested in the book, many gardeners will enjoy watching a few episodes of the coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show 2016, which can likely be found on Youtube or on BBCi (although the BBC blocks foreign viewers, so an inexpensive DNS proxy service such as UnoTelly, which prevents streaming services from knowing where your computer is located, is necessary for viewers outside the UK).

Here's to the Greatest Flower Show on Earth -- and thanks for reading! -Beth

Merry Christmas!

It's good to be back! After a month away to focus on other things -- taking a mental break from gardening, working on my new research/writing project (a book about Iowa garden history), and the last two weeks of preparing for Christmas -- I'm glad to be back writing this blog, thinking about gardening and catching up on what others have been doing.

It's hard to believe that another Christmas is over -- the last of the family staying with us left our house this afternoon, and the weather was so warm, I actually worked outside in the gardens for a little while today -- not something I ever remember doing in late December before. After an unusually cold November, most of December has been quite mild, and the last few days have seen temperatures in the 50s, with no snow on the totally non-frozen ground. It's like we have English weather this month. We had not a white Christmas, but a brown one this year -- and I liked it!

Yesterday when I was outside, I noticed a disconcertingly large amount of grass growing into my front border, and it was so nice outside today that I got out the gardening clothes that I had put away for the year and worked outside, pulling out most of the grass. I feel better now, knowing that it won't be taunting me every time I walk past it during the whole winter (which still lies ahead....).

I also cleared out a spot right next to our house on the east side of it, and prepared the ground for planting early cool-season annuals like sweet peas there. I was inspired to do this by reading my new book that I received as a Christmas present:

This was my most useful Christmas present!

"Cool Flowers" was published in October by Lisa Mason Ziegler, a cut-flower gardener in Virginia. Even though she gardens in a warmer zone (Zone 7) than I do (Zone 5), she has included advice for colder-winter gardeners in her book, and I think her advice might be sound for Iowa. The book describes how to grow annuals that like cooler weather, like sweet peas, which I've never had any luck with in the past.

After reading "Cool Flowers," I realize that the problem was that I never planted them early enough. Unlike in England and the west coast, Iowa spring weather moves from frozen ground to summer heat in a relatively short period, so the cool weather period that sweet peas thrive in is limited.

Gardeners in mild winter areas can plant sweet peas in fall, but that won't work here. The trick in cold-winter areas (like Iowa) is to plant earlier in spring than we're used to planting things. When midwesterners think of annuals, we think of petunias, zinnias and other warm-season annuals, which cannot be planted until after the last expected frost date, (about May 10 here). But cool season annuals are different.

To be able grow sweet peas, I now know that I must start them in February (inside) or March (sowed outside), protect them a bit near the house until April, and shelter them from the hot western sun of early summer. With any luck, by doing this I will have them blooming in April, May and possibly June.

"Cool Flowers" also describes other flowers that tolerate light frost, about 30 different varieties in all, and relates how to grow each kind. These include flowers that I would like to try such as Canterbury Bells, godetia, lisianthus and Iceland poppies, as well as ones I've grown with success like snapdragons (one of my favorite flowers, and gloriously pictured on the book's cover), bachelor buttons and Bells of Ireland.

I'm looking forward to having something to do in late winter and early spring, and I'm curious to see if this method works.

Anyway, it's nice to be back, and I'll try to post and read your own blogs at least once a week until spring, when I will again aim for posting twice a week.

Hope you too had a wonderful holiday with family and friends. Thanks for reading! -Beth

Merry Christmas!

Booksale Fever! New & Old Garden Books for Winter Reading

My stack of 21 garden books that I found at the booksale. Good winter reading!

Last Thursday afternoon my husband and I drove to the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines (the largest and capital city of Iowa), to attend the Planned Parenthood Booksale, a twice-annual sale of used and donated books that is one of the largest used booksales in the United States. I have been attending this sale since my parents took me as a child (over 30 years of attending now), and I love buying used books, so it's one of my longtime, favorite traditions.

Waiting in line for the sale to begin, the rush inside when the doors open, then seeing the books all arranged on tables just waiting for you to peruse them: heaven! The sale has over 400,000 items (!!) and this year it had an even larger selection of garden books than usual. I always rush to the garden book tables first, and it takes me almost a hour to look through just that subject (even when I'm trying to hurry, lest someone else snag the best books). I put the ones I think I might want into a handy shopping cart that they provide for those of us whose desire for books is stronger than our arm muscles.

Since we were there from 3pm to 8pm (when my husband begged to go home), to prevent ourselves from becoming weak with hunger while book shopping we visited the concession area that purveys delicious "State Fair food" (hot dogs, walking tacos, chili, nachos, and my favorite: fresh, all-natural, squeezed-while-you-watch lemonade). Mmmm!

A photo of only a small section of the sale (from www.desmoinesbooksale.com).

I ended up with three large boxes of books this year; over 70 books in total (my husband claims I have a book-buying "problem," but he doesn't know what he's talking about...). Most of my acquisitions were children's history and science books, found for $1-$2 apiece, that I use for homeschooling my two children, but I also found 21 garden books, for less than $5 each on average (some of the older books were only $2, and a few of the newest ones in nice condition were $7 or $8).

All 70 or so books that I found. Most are children's history and science books, but garden books were also well-represented in the haul.

I already have a large collection of garden books (at least 500), but I can always use more to stave off the winter blues, increase my gardening knowledge and help me plan and improve my gardens. (Plus, I just love looking at beautiful photographs of glorious gardens!)

My garden book collection is divided into a number of sub-subjects: Garden Design, Garden History, Books About Specific Flowers/Plants, Books Portraying Specific Gardens, English Gardening, and miscellaneous other garden subjects. I was able to find quite a few very interesting books in most of these subjects on Thursday:

Garden History Books

My latest acquisitions in garden history books and historically significant garden books.

I have a great interest in garden history (and I'm currently thinking about writing a book about Iowa garden history), so I'm always on the lookout for interesting and beautiful books about that subject. Ten of the 21 books I found at the sale are either books about the history of gardening or classic gardening books that are now a part of garden history in themselves:

• A Brief History of Gardening is a world overview of significant advances and trends in gardening, from Ancient Mesopotamia until the end of the 20th century.
• Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden by Gertrude Jekyll was written by the great Arts & Crafts English gardener and published in 1908. Each winter I try to read one or two classic garden books, and I think this will be one that I read this winter. 
• Garden People is a fascinating book of photos of English gardeners taken by Valerie Finnis from the 1950s through the 1970s.
• The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman describes the career and designs of noted landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman (1869-1950), including her well known designs for Stan Hywet, Longue Vue, and Duke University's Sarah P. Duke Gardens. 
• The American Lawn is a collection of essays about the history and meaning of lawns in the United States - an important topic in the history of gardens.
• Garden Shrubs and their Histories was first published in 1963 and tells the stories of the discovery and cultivation of numerous garden plants and shrubs. This edition is updated by the addition of more than a hundred beautiful full-color botanical illustrations from the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Outside the Bungalow describes the types of planting that are historically appropriate for Arts & Crafts and 1920s-era bungalow houses, and is filled with lovely photos of well-maintained historical houses and their gardens.
• Gardens are for People was originally published in 1955 by noted American landscape architect Thomas Church and is a well-known classic text that describes the then-revolutionary idea that yards should be designed specifically for the use of the people living in a house. Filled with photos of midcentury garden designs, it is required reading for most landscape students.
• America's Gardens was published in 1964 by Better Homes and Gardens, and is filled with vintage color photos of some of the most well-known garden in the US.  

The most interesting garden history book I found was the oldest: "Continuous Bloom in America" by Louise Shelton (the link will take you to an epub you can read entirely, because the book is out of copyright). First published in 1915, my copy is a reprint from 1926, and is in very good shape (the pages are still uncut, so it has never been read). Not bad for $3.

The frontispiece photo, showing "Cherrycroft" in Morristown, NJ.
I absolutely love old garden photos!

Books About Specific Plants

The books I found about growing specific plants or types of plants.

I also found a number of books that cover how to grow specific plants or categories of plants. Last spring, when I was designing my island shrub beds, I checked Adrian Bloom's "Gardening with Conifers" out of my local public library, so I already know that it's one of the best books on the subject and one that has received much public praise, and I was happy to snag a nice copy for $5. I'm also looking forward to learning more about growing coleus, scented indoor plants, early bulbs (so nice to see after winter!) and irises. And Tracy Disabato-Aust's book, 50 High-Impact, Low-Care Garden Plants, is one I plan to study carefully over the winter. Lastly, who doesn't love Old-Fashioned Flowers?

Miscellaneous Garden Subjects

A few miscellaneous books in different subjects.

The last four books I found the other evening were miscellaneous in their sub-subjects:

• Everything You Can Do in the Garden Without Actually Gardening is not actually about gardening but instead is an amusing historical look at how people have used their gardens. I can't describe it any better than this review at Amazon.uk:  "Richly illustrated and packed with extracts from letters, diaries and novels, EYCDITGWAG looks at gardens as places for escape and inspiration, fresh air and exercise, fire and water, sun and shade, eating, drinking and smoking, love, children, games, parties, birds and beasts - such as the bizarre menagerie that Dante Gabriel Rossetti maintained in his back garden, which included two wombats, a marmot and an armadillo. And if that's not more interesting than when to plant your onions, I don't know what is."
• The Royal Mile is a small book describing a mile-long garden made for the Garden and Landscape Architecture Triennial in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, which took place in 2008.
• Williamsburg's Glorious Gardens (you can actually see all the glory at this link) is what I like to refer to as pure eye candy for the gardener. Looking at these beautiful colorful photos, heavy on spring and early summer blooms, will sustain my spirits in February and March, when I'm yearning for signs of spring.
• Colorful Gardens is an addition to my collection of books about different flower colors (shown below), which I became interested in when I was designing my Rainbow Border. 

My bookshelf of garden books about different colored flowers. Some are entire books about one color of flowers, but others cover all the colors by chapter.

I do want to note an interesting point about the books that I bought at the booksale: eight of them were discards from the Des Moines Botanical Center's library. The Botanical Center has been retrenching over the past year after serious financial difficulties and has recently reopened to much fanfare, with new horticultural staff and new gardens in process. I have yet to visit, but I'll make a point of doing so next year. I wish them much luck with their exciting changes, and I'm glad they will not be closing (my husband and I were married there in 1998, so the place has special meaning to me). I understand that they probably needed to let go of things that occupy space (like their library) that will be needed for new purposes, and I'm happy that I was able to buy some of the books they donated to the sale.

I hope you too find many good garden books to tide yourselves over for the winter. Thanks for reading! -Beth

Island Beds and Bressingham Gardens

I've been researching about island beds as I plan to make my own ones filled with flowering trees, shrubs, evergreens and bulbs, and I became interested in the history of these freestanding beds. As a book-aholic with a large collection of garden books, I first looked on Amazon.com to see if any books had been published about island beds, and surprisingly, found only one:

"Perennials in Island Beds," written by Alan Bloom and published in 1977, is practically a dinosaur amongst garden books. It has no color photos inside, just a middle section of 16 black-and-white photos. It's a very short book of fewer than 100 pages -- and small pages at that, barely larger than a trade paperback.

But it was fascinating to read, and I suspect it will one day be of value to garden historians. Alan Bloom (1906-2005), the son of a market gardener, was a leading nurseryman in eastern England from 1926 until his death. He bought a small Georgian house and estate named Bressingham after the second world war, where he (and his son, Adrian Bloom) continued his work in developing hardy perennials. His company eventually became known as Blooms of Bressingham, and was responsible for introducing many well-known cultivars including Achillea ‘Moonshine’, Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, Phlox ‘Eva Cullum’ and Geranium ‘Rozanne’.

He also may have discovered (and certainly popularized) the idea of planting perennials in island-shaped garden beds, in England and here in the US. This book tells the story of how he came to think of planting in this way: Tiring of staking so many of his perennial flowers in his borders, he noticed that the plants that he grew in open nursery beds didn't grow as tall as in borders and had sturdier stems, requiring far less staking, and he theorized that a wall, hedge or fence backing a border provided protection from wind that resulted in floppier, taller stems.

In 1953, he designed some experimental and ornamental demonstration beds in his grass yard at Bressingham. These worked so well that a few years later he made more island beds in an adjacent 6-acre field, called "The Dell," for a total of 50 beds containing more than 5,000 plant species. Son Adrian Bloom added another area in 1967 named "Foggy Bottom," showcasing conifers, heathers, trees and shrubs. There are now more than 8,000 species in the gardens.

Here are a few beautiful modern photos (from Flickr, taken by Nick, Puritani35):

The original beds laid out next to Bressingham Hall by Alan Bloom in 1953.  The plants have been changed around many times, of course.

The breathtakingly beautiful Dell Garden at Bressingham. The mix of evergreens, deciduous trees and shrubs, and perennials makes this resemble a paradise on earth. Too beautiful to describe.

More Dell Garden. So lovely.

Here is a greatly enjoyable 7-minute tour of the gardens given by Adrian Bloom, and this brief History of the Gardens is interesting. When/if I ever get to British shores, I will certainly make a point of visiting Bressingham gardens.

But back to the idea of island beds in general: Alan Bloom may indeed have been the one to come up with the idea of planting perennial plants in freestanding, curved, irregularly-shaped island beds, but the Victorians had planted in island beds a century earlier -- although the shapes were mostly ovals or symmetrical crescents. They often planted tender bedding annuals in their island beds, which required the labor of numerous gardeners.

Annuals in a series of island beds, from "Town Planting And The Trees, Shrubs, Herbaceous And Other Plants That Are Best Adapted For  Resisting Smoke", by Angus D. Webster (1910) from chestofbooks.com.

Another island bed with succulent plants, same source. This island bed is raised into a mound, for better viewing.

Island beds likely fell out of favor when formal Victorian bedding was renounced in favor of the more "natural" hardy perennial borders advocated by William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll in the late 19th century. They probably associated the freestanding beds with annual bedding schemes, so island beds were out of fashion during the growth of gardening popularity in the Arts & Crafts period and pre-WWII era.

It wasn't until the postwar period that Alan Bloom rediscovered the idea of planting in freestanding island beds, and he used perennials, shrubs and trees in them, not just annual bedding plants. And his beds followed the lay of the land, resulting in irregularly-shaped beds, which were perhaps also inspired by the kidney shapes in modern design that Thomas Church had incorporated into his pool designs in the 1940s, as well as Brazilian landscape architect Burle Marx' designs of the midcentury. These had in turn been influenced by the organic shapes used in modern art in the 1930s.

Thomas Church designed this famous kidney-shaped pool in 1948 for a private house in Sonoma, CA.
(picasaweb, Michelle)

It seems strange that irregularly-shaped island beds, which are so common now, are of such recent origin, but I guess many things seem inevitable after they are discovered. As an admirer of Arts & Crafts-style English gardens, I have preferred geometric shapes until now, but I think trees and shrubs might look better in these organic-shaped beds than in formal ones, and I will undoubtedly begin to appreciate perennials in island beds more now as well. Bressingham gardens has certainly demonstrated how beautiful island beds can be.

Book Review: "The New Low-Maintenance Garden" by Valerie Easton

Since it's been too cold to do much gardening outside over the past week, I read one of the books I checked out of the library. Here are my thoughts about it:

Published in 2009 Timber Press.
284 pages.

"The New Low-Maintenance Garden" was written by Valerie Easton, a longtime garden columnist who downsized from her large garden to "a very small house with a very small garden": a geometrical backyard entertaining area surrounded by raised beds, pots, and a few very small areas of easy-care foliage plants, with no turf to mow.

Some concerns about this book:

1) Ms. Easton gardens only in Seattle and usually writes for a Seattle readership, and this book is more than usually tailored for a specifically Northwest audience. The majority of the plants she recommends in the book are not ones that will thrive in the rest of the country, and her recommendation for planting everything in pots is certainly not "low-maintenance" here in the hot, windy Midwest, where pots often need to be watered twice a day in the dog days of summer. I prefer weeding once a month over watering daily (and isn’t that wasteful of water?).

The author's new small garden. Perhaps the most floriferous residential
garden pictured in the book.

2) Many of the areas pictured in the book are not what I consider to be "gardens." The British term the area around a house to be "the garden," but here in the United States, a "garden" implies a place where plants are the focus. A number of the "gardens" in this book are just attractive paved areas with modern-design screens for privacy and a few foliage plants in tiny beds. The few beautiful, plant-filled exceptions didn’t look particularly low-maintenance to me.

Highly modernistic plastic screens are not exactly to my taste in a garden.

3) This book was published in 2009 at the height of the eco-guilt movement, and the author does not let an opportunity for lecturing about the evils of lawns pass by. But in her zeal to rid us of them entirely, she doesn't mention reducing the work of maintaining a lawn, with mowing strips, etc. If someone doesn’t want to maintain a lawn, he should replace his with something else. But enough already with trying to guilt people who enjoy a traditional lawn into getting rid of it!

4) The author’s preference for foliage gardens is not particularly appealing to those of us who garden specifically because we love flowers. None of the gardens in the book were joyous, flower-filled spaces; no examples of small cottage gardens that can still be relatively easily maintained. I’m just not convinced that we need to give up flowers when we grow old.

This is pretty beautiful, for a largely foliage garden.
But is this really "low-maintenance"?

But the book did have some good suggestions, and I'm glad I read it. And it has caused me to think more deeply about the issue that all gardeners must confront: their physical and time limitations (and resource limits too, of course).

These limitations are not static; they change throughout our lives, as they did for the author. As young people, we often lack a settled place for gardening and money to spend on plants. When our lives become more settled, perhaps after buying a house, we enter a nesting phase in which we often wish to make our surroundings more beautiful. We still have energy and physical strength enough to handle the physical work that accompanies gardening, and may begin to desire to grow all the lovely plants that we read about. As we age, however, we are less able to handle hard physical work and may have sated our plant curiosity. Our children (if we had them) are likely grown, so this is a time we may consider downsizing.

Again, hauntingly beautiful -- but how can a pond be low-maintenance?
Her pond was one of the things the author specifically mentioned as a
source of laborious maintenance in her old garden.... 

But plant-loving older gardeners don't need to choose all or nothing. Ageing doesn't have to mean that we can no longer grow a garden full of beautiful flowers. However, the author does include some good, traditional suggestions for designing a lowER-maintenance garden:

1. Obviously, a smaller garden will take less time to maintain, all other features being the same.
2. Some plants require less attention than others. This doesn't mean that gardeners shouldn't ever grow delphiniums (which require staking) or iris (which must be divided every few years); just that they should grow mostly lower-maintenance plants and choose only a few more labor-intensive favorites. And the author is right that we should avoid aggressively spreading plants, which can be a lot of work, but then she includes in her list of recommended plants creeping lily turf (liriope spicata), which she must not be aware (Seattle-focused again) is invasive in a number of states. However, she does have a good word for modestly self-seeding plants such as borage, poppies, nigella and tall verbena, which are delightful even though you may have to pull a few out.
3. Having fewer different kinds of plants makes for easier maintenance. Older gardeners should already know which plants give them the most joy each year, and narrowing the list down does make for less work.
4. Having good, well-amended soil reduces growing problems that can require work. Likewise, mulching can reduce watering frequency.
5. Reducing (not necessarily entirely eliminating) lawn area can cut down on work -- as can mowing strips, etc. 

Ms. Easton is right that each of us needs to honestly confront our ability and willingness to do garden work before planning our gardens. But I believe that her own exhaustion has led her to overreact by advocating that gardeners eliminate many of the plants and garden features that bring them joy.

A large kitchen garden and ornamental pond, viewed from beneath
a grape- and kiwi-draped arbor under which guests "need merely to
reach up to pick dessert." Really? Low maintenance?

Unlike the author, I have not yet reached the point of wanting to reduce my garden areas. (In fact, I am thinking about making a whole new garden area this year -- albeit a relatively low-maintenance area -- despite my vow not to make any new garden areas this year. More about this in my next post.) There are still so many plants I want to grow. Of course, as a naturally lazy person, I do want to minimize the work I have to do, and the author's suggestions are for the most part good ones, but that doesn't mean I can't have my flowers.

"The New Low-Maintenance Garden" is a good book to read to stimulate thought about how to reduce the work of gardening in our own gardens. But it will ultimately be most useful for gardeners who live in the Pacific Northwest and have the same taste for modern foliage gardens as the author.

Book Review: "Refresh Your Garden Design with Color, Texture & Form" by Rebecca Sweet

"Refresh Your Garden Design with Color, Texture & Form" by Rebecca Sweet was published late in 2013, but my library didn't receive it until last month. It actually turned out to be good timing for me though, as winter is the best time to think about making changes in your garden, so there is plenty of time to think things through before spring comes.

And Sweet, a garden designer in Northern California, has many helpful suggestions for gardeners to think about:

Her first chapter deals with seeing what's in your garden, something that most gardeners might think they do already, but actually have trouble doing. It's hard for us to look at something we see every day and notice problem spots that could be improved. Things like gaps where plants have died (we may still think of a spot as "belonging" to the plant that died so we haven't planted something else there); eyesores such as utility boxes, garbage cans or an unattractive structure in our neighbor's yard; or clashing colors between neighboring plants.

The best way to really see our gardens, according to Sweet, is take photos of every area and study them dispassionately, like a disinterested outsider. It's amazing what we can see in photos that we can't see in person. Also, another trick is to use photo editing software to make our photos black and white, so that we aren't distracted by colors, and we can focus on shapes and textures in garden areas. And using a marker to draw on photos can help us visualize new plant shapes in place. This first chapter is probably the most useful in the whole book.

This series of photos from the book shows how black and white photos can reveal a lack of contrasting textures,
especially in the first pair of photos.

The second chapter focuses on color theory, covering adjacent, complementary, split-complementary and monochromatic color schemes in the garden, using a color wheel and garden photos for illustration.

The third chapter shows how different textures can be used to create interest in the garden. This is where the black and white photos really help, and the book shows examples of garden areas in which too many plants of the same texture used together can be boring, despite the differing colors of those plants or leaves. A helpful tip for me in this section was to use bright yellow and chartreuse leaf colors to lighten up shady areas, but to use a higher ratio of fine textures to bold to keep those darker areas looking open and airy. I think I will use this strategy when working on my border against the north side of my house, which is currently shady and formless. A bit of leaf sunshine might be just the answer for this spot.

An example of the textured garden that Sweet advocates.

The last instruction chapter covers form, showing how including different shapes can take a garden area from bland to interesting. Sweet includes photos that demonstrate how the addition of a few spiky-shaped or tall plants can add life to a monotonous garden bed. She also discusses how to balance the visual weight of plants, and how triangular placement of plants adds continuity and visual depth to the garden.

A final chapter provides an annotated and illustrated list of about 80 recommended annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs. 42 of the 71 perennials she suggests are hardy in my Zone 5 garden, which I suppose isn't terrible, considering that the author gardens in California. However, most of the plants lean toward being foliage plants, which this flower lover finds somewhat joyless.

All foliage and few flowers. I do like the bright golden color of the sedum in the bottom right corner, and there is a
rhododendron at top left, which is beautiful.

I understand that every garden needs what she calls "workhorse" plants, which serve as structural plants for most of the year. And the book is about adding color, texture and form to our gardens, not about flower gardening. But I still couldn't help feeling that there just weren't enough flowers in this book, either in her suggested plants or the garden photographs. The book had many hints that will help me in addressing my shady north-facing border, but in my sunnier areas I want more blooms. Perhaps one day when I'm a more mature gardener, I will value foliage over the fleeting loveliness of blossoms, but I haven't reached that stage yet.

Who's afraid of color and flowers? Perhaps what I love is simply out of style these days. This is one of only a couple of photos shown in the book that really wowed me. (And it was given only as an example of complementary colors.)

But this is simply a matter of my personal taste in gardens, not a reflection on the effectiveness of this book. All in all, it's a very helpful book. Gardeners who feel a nagging dissatisfaction with their gardens but can't quite figure out what can be done to improve them should start by reading "Refresh Your Garden Design." It will provide many answers.

(Please note: I am out of town this week and have pre-scheduled this post. I won't be able to respond to any comments until I return. Thanks for reading!)

Book Review: "Plantiful" by Kristin Green

Plantiful? Or INVASIVE? (...cue sinister music.)

"Plantiful" by Kristin Green was just published at the end of January by Timber Press, and already I've gotten to read it (I love it when my local library is able to purchase books right away, not after months of waiting, since reviews are not nearly as helpful later on).

But it's a book that, despite its usefulness, I'm a bit surprised was ever published at all, due to the controversy over plants that spread, which some people confuse with genuinely invasive plants.

The premise of the book is that to make gardening easier, cheaper and more serendipitous, we should grow plants that are bountiful and exuberant in their nature: plants that self-seed and spread generously of their own accord. In this way, gardeners can save money by buying fewer plants and have a garden that fills in quickly.

Uh-Oh, I hear gardeners everywhere chiming in together. Doesn't that mean the author is telling unknowing new gardeners to plant INVASIVE species? No, in fact she spends a section of the book addressing that question:

1. Not all aggressive or weedy plants are invasive.
2. Not all invasive plants are invasive everywhere.
3. The term "invasive" should be used only for introduced species that have escaped cultivation, colonized vulnerable ecosystems or outcompeted native species, and deprive insects and birds of edible species. 
4. The term does not apply to plants that can be fairly easily controlled within a tended garden, despite their spreading or seeding tendencies.
5. Gardeners should consult invasive species lists for their state, as well as local extensions or master gardeners for advice about what is truly invasive and what is simply exuberant. Additionally, the author lists the states (if any) in which the plants on her lists are actually considered to be invasive.

With that in mind, Green has provided lists of:

1. 50 self-seeding annuals and perennials and general information on seed saving and propagation from seeds.
2. 50 spreading perennials and shrubs and general info about dividing and propagating them.
3. 50 tender perennials that can be overwintered in cold frames, basements and indoors. 

Cleome seeds around, but
who really minds?

The first section doesn't seem controversial to me; most gardeners value the way annuals and perennials can seed themselves into spots that we would never think about or be able to purposely plant things, and our gardens are the more interesting and beautiful for it. Most, if seeded in excess, can be easily be pulled out or moved by any but the most neglectful gardener, and her list includes such cottage garden stalwarts as chives, Queen Anne's lace, milkweed, cleome, larkspur, foxgloves, columbines, California poppies, hellbores, bronze fennel, lupines, forget-me-nots, nigella, nicotiana, feverfew, mullein, and verbena bonariensis. Most gardeners love these flowers and wouldn't want to garden without them.

What's wrong with a few self-seeders? This certainly looks beautiful to me.

The second section of spreading perennials is probably what will leave some gardeners (such as the first reviewer of this book on Amazon.com) frowning in disapproval, perhaps even gasping for breath in horror. I myself have never had problems with many of the plants on this list here in Iowa: Yarrow, Japanese anemones, mums, cranesbill geranium, lysimachia, lamium, monarda and phlox (both tall garden and creeping). However, there are undoubtedly some species on the list that have caused gardeners grief: plume poppy, lily turf, Mexican evening primrose, and even spearmint (which I still love because it's so delightful in fragrance and indispensable for julips or mojitos, although she sensibly recommends planting it in a place with natural boundaries, such as between house and sidewalk).

Spearmint: It's thuggish, but I still wouldn't be without it.
Mmmm... mohitos.

She does mention in her text (but does not include on her lists) plants that she personally doesn't have problems keeping in check but that might actually be invasive in some places: ox-eye daisies (leucanthemum vulgaris -- one of my favorite plants which I couldn't live without), lamb's ears, ajuga and borage among them.

Her lists don't include gooseneck loosestrife, physostegia, bishop's weed, comfrey, lily of the valley (which, for some reason, I can't seem to make flower or spread at all), trumpet vine or many other plants that are widely acknowledged as highly aggressive or even truly invasive.

The dreaded plume poppy.

Nevertheless, many gardeners will still be horrified at the thought that new gardeners may unknowingly plant some of the things on her lists and end up regretting the amount of time and physical labor they will spend trying to eradicate them, and there is some truth to this worry.

However, she is absolutely right that beautiful and enjoyable gardens are filled with plants that flourish and look exuberant. Should we avoid those plants and grow only species that behave themselves by not spreading or seeding?

How could I ever live without ox-eye daisies?

It seems to me that there is a continuum of species (which is different for each location and each gardener's desires, of course):

1. Species that are prone to dying immediately and are wholly unsuited to our climate, soil and location. We will have to coddle these constantly to even get them to survive. In my opinion, a gardener who desperately wants to grow a species like this should probably either move to a place where it will grow or simply give up.
2. Species that will survive and grow without heroic intervention but will never flower that well or look happy, because growing conditions are not quite right or the plants are generally weak in constitution.
3. Well-behaved species or cultivars that grow well but hardly increase in size or spread seeds. If a gardener wants a carefully-controlled garden as a work of art, she should limit herself to growing these. These plants should probably also be the foundation of most gardens.
4. Self-seeders and exuberant spreaders that delight the gardener. These pop up in unexpected places and allow serendipity to have a hand in creating our gardens. As such, many gardeners will want to include them, even though there is some additional work in keeping them from spreading "too much" (whatever each gardener's definition of that is -- it's like defining a weed). This is what "Plantiful" is about.
5. Truly invasive species that damage natural areas, farms or other people's gardens, which should be avoided and destroyed when possible.

It's too bad that some gardeners will condemn this book outright because of their inflexible opinions and their certainty about which plants are suitable for every gardener's location and temperament. There certainly is a place for a book about deliberately and knowledgeably growing self-seeders and spreaders -- the author is indeed right that gardeners can make delightful, cost-effective gardens by including these exuberant plants.

The third section of the book covers overwintering tender perennials, which seems somewhat unrelated to the first two sections. I know her reasoning is that overwintering allows gardeners to save money by not re-purchasing frost-tender plants each year, and since she spent time in California, she undoubtedly misses growing many things now in Rhode Island. But overwintering seems to involve so much extra work to make them survive, which is unrelated to plants that grow well (perhaps too well) outside. Sure, I'd love to be able to grow rosemary and lemon verbena here, but I'm not certain that the trouble of overwintering it would be worth the money saved in not replacing it each year. But perhaps I'll give it a shot this year and see how it goes.

One of the few photos in the book showing a larger view of a garden: a path edged with chives in bloom. Beautiful.

The photos in the book are not particularly glorious, with only a few showing the larger design of gardens and most of them just closeups of listed flowers, but they suffice for the task. Her writing is certainly both knowledgeable and enthusiastic and does inspire me to try some of her ideas, while providing advice about how to go about doing it. Altogether a useful book, although one that is doomed to be condemned by gardeners suffering from invasive species hysteria.

Book Review: "My Secret Garden" by Alan Titchmarsh

A really good garden book!

"My Secret Garden" by Alan Titchmarsh was published in 2012, and although I didn't get to read it until early 2013, I have since read it several times and I'm more impressed with it the more I read it.

Not only are Alan Titchmarsh's gardens absolutely breathtaking and the photographs by Jonathan Buckley lavishly beautiful, but the book is well designed and (rare among garden portrait books) includes enough information for readers to feel they know Titchmarsh and his gardens -- which is good, because they are private gardens not open to the public and this book is the only way for anyone (even those living physically close enough to visit) to experience his gardens.

In my last post, I made a list of the things that I think a book should tell readers about a garden, so that readers can gain the greatest understanding of a site and gardens without actually visiting it:

1. A garden's region and setting (rural, small-town, suburban or urban) and how its location influenced the garden
2. The basic history of the garden (the age of the house, the property and the garden, and how it developed over many years or in only a few years)
3. The relationship of the garden to the house, in style and layout
4. Any significant plant collections or garden areas
5. Something about the maker(s) of the garden (the reasons behind the garden; how much experience the gardener(s) have had; any specific influences on the garden such as travel, etc.)
6. The basic layout of the property, orienting it to the four cardinal directions, showing the relationship of the garden areas to each other and to any major landscape features such as mountains, large bodies of water, etc. A basic property map is very helpful.
7. The climate of the garden, temperature ranges, sun patterns, significant wind directions, type(s) of soil, and any other conditions that aided or discouraged the making of the garden  
8. Whenever possible, photos should be taken over the course of a year, so that the garden can be seen through the changing seasons

Unfortunately, many books that portray multiple gardens often don't devote enough space to text that describes the garden or interviews with the creators of the garden. Instead, they try to include more gardens in the book and the maximum number of photos of each garden, and include only a short, breezy description of each garden. While it is certainly enjoyable to see a few more nice photos of beautiful gardens, the shallow knowledge of each garden can leave serious gardeners wanting more.

Titchmarsh's beautiful 18th-century Georgian house.

But not in the case of Titchmarsh's book. Obviously, a book written about just one garden has the space to go into a great deal more detail than one that tries to cram 15-20 gardens into a single book. But even more important, when a garden portrait is written by the garden's creator or by another serious gardener (instead of by an interior designer or journalist), the account will almost certainly contain more of the information that other gardeners want to read about -- regardless of the length of the written material.

"My Secret Garden" contains every single item on my list: Titchmarsh relates in his own words how he designed and made his new garden nearly from scratch over the 10 years since he and his wife purchased the 4-acre property with an 18th-century Georgian house in 2002. The thoughtful photos were taken over seven years and in every season, and include enough photos of the house and outbuildings to establish the relationship between them and the garden areas.

Spring

Summer

Winter

Titchmarsh laudably includes his own beautifully hand-drawn map of the layout of the property (although my only criticism of the book is that the map was at the end of the book, and I didn't discover it until I was finished puzzling through his descriptions of the layout throughout the whole book. In any future edition it should be moved to the front to be more helpful.)

One of the nicer garden maps I have seen. Click on it for more interesting detail.

Although most British gardeners probably feel they already know Alan Titchmarsh quite well from his long career in garden television shows, I had seen him only a few times on British programs and knew very little about him. His book, though, did a good job of giving me his background (he started his horticultural career working for a park, resulting in the obsession with neat garden grooming that shows in his new garden, and his new garden is strictly private because his last garden was the filming site for a gardening show that lasted more than a decade, and his wife was tired of the constant presence of cameras and crew).

Titchmarsh's latest greenhouse (his first was one he built out of leftover lumber and old windows when he was 12). I venture this one cost a bit more....

The tone of his writing also helps us get to know him personally: he is pointedly down-to-earth; he repeatedly plays down the formality of his garden, claiming no grandeur "above his station," and eschews the horticultural snobbery that is all too pervasive among class-conscious English gardeners. But throughout the book, he does occasionally betray a latent anxiety about tastefulness, whether a certain combination of flowers is too bright (and he claims that Kwanzan flowering cherry trees are too much even for him -- disclosure: I have five planted in my side yard!) -- although this doesn't prevent him from including such fun garden ornaments as life-size lead pig sculptures.

One of the more endearing touches
 in his garden.

He relates both his successes and his failures, enumerating dead plants and areas that didn't work, and describes the growing conditions in the various parts of his gardens. He also gives us some tips on growing certain plants and on design of gardens -- although he insists that he is not a garden designer, just a gardener.

Right, no design here....

However, I'm not sure that I believe him on that point. His garden is both lovely and very well-designed. In fact, I did think that perhaps it was all too perfect somehow, and almost too well-designed, so that it didn't seem like a real gardener's garden. Perhaps that's because it didn't look like it was slowly expanded over time, as most residential gardens usually are, gradually taking over more areas of the property as the gardener's planting ambitions increase. Instead, it looked as if it had been designed of a piece, which it undoubtedly was. Of course, he knows how to do things efficiently after decades of gardening, he knows what he wants, and he's not a young man any more and consequently less patient (and less mistake-prone), and he has the means to plant it all at once, so I'm sure it made sense to plan everything out perfectly from the get-go.

Breathtakingly beautiful cherry trees in spring
(even despite my sad scan).

And his garden is perfectly appropriate for the beautiful Georgian house he lives in now. Perhaps it's the style of house that seems out of keeping with his down-to-earth, anti-snobbish, encourage-all-gardeners persona. I would expect him to have a big garden full of mammoth-size veg and pots full of petunias (they are one of my favorite annuals, so I'm not looking down my nose at these star performers). But his very upper-middle-class Georgian mansion seems like it belongs to a rich doctor, not to an honest, plant-loving gardener who likes to get his hands dirty. I know he's a very successful, almost movie-star class gardener, but his roots are still respectably humble. However, if he and his wife want a beautiful trophy house and garden, they've earned it in an honest way and deserve to enjoy it in their retirement years.

I wish laburnum trees were hardy here....

And I'm very glad that he chose to share it with us by writing such a well-thought-out book with such beautiful photographs -- one of the better books about gardens that I've seen yet. His gardens are truly glorious -- most of us can only hope that our own gardens will ever be a fraction as beautiful as his are, and I imagine that they will continue to grow even more lovely as the years mellow the perfection of them. I hope he continues to derive as much joy from them during that process as he did in making them.