Gardens
Recipes for success
Ursula Buchan
Iwas always told that what distinguishes human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to cook and to gar- den. These two skills have to be learned; they are not instinctive activities like nest- building or back-scratching or betting on horses. It has always mildly surprised me, therefore, that we do not treat our garden- ing like our cooking and learn to make flower beds as we learn to make dishes, by following recipes.
It looks, however, as if 'recipe' gardening may be gaining in popularity. There are now books containing precise information on how many of what plants should be put together, and when, to make an attractive planting. Coincidentally, there is a growing awareness in the garden centres that plants which will look harmonious together should be sold together.
What has brought this about is presum- ably what brought cookery books into being — demand from a large number of people in a situation of dire need and com- plete ignorance. As Mrs Beeton addressed those young women for whom marriage meant the ordering of a household for the first time, so modern gardening authors now address would-be gardeners who have learned nothing at their father's elbow.
To a child there are a great many inter- esting things to do in a garden, but flower gardening is definitely not one of them. Children can quite easily grow to adult- hood maintaining the pretence that the sight of their parents' bottoms up in a flow- er bed all summer has nothing to do with them. Along the way they may learn, almost by mistake, what constitutes a weed and how to grow a sunflower, but how to put flowers together to make a pleasing and unified scheme will remain a mystery.
Until now, those children, when grown up, have had to depend on gardening books (and there are a great many of them) which only allow the grains of inspi- ration to trickle out slowly and randomly, like sand held in a clenched fist. Yet, with a few honourable exceptions, these books are not written with such verve, wit and sensi-1 tivity that reading them for their own sakes is a particular pleasure. The vast majority of gardening books are bought not for the text, therefore, but for the colour pho- tographs; these are just as striking, and mouth-watering, as those to be found in cookery books.
People mock the gardening 'recipe book' and accuse it of spoon-feeding readers, rather than just gently encouraging them, but, if writers (or their publishers) treat books mainly as conduits for imparting information — and they do — it might just as well be in clear and concise recipe form, and be done with it.
The advantage of garden recipe books, if they are done well, is that you can see what the results are likely to be, beforehand. The photographs and illustrations may often be somewhat stylised, but one's saumon en croute never looks exactly like the picture in the book, either. The first, and best-known, exponent of this type of book was Kathleen Brown, who coined the phrase `recipe gardening' in Creative Container Gardening, the book she wrote with Effie Romain in 1987. Her most recent offering, Create a Cottage Garden (Michael Joseph, £17.99), does the same thing for borders and beds. Mary Keen attempted something similar in her Garden Border Book (Viking, 1987), where she described in detail a number of real, and successful, flower borders; plans of these were labelled with the names, and numbers, of plants used. The considerable success of this book attests to the need we all feel to pick other people's brains, as quickly and efficiently as possible. The most recent and, for my money, the best garden recipe book is the The Border Book (Dorling Kindersley) by Anna Pavord, the gardening columnist of the Independent. She has devised planting schemes for a number of situations, which have been illustrated both with clear 'art- works' (drawings to you and me), and with colour photographs of many of the plants suggested. Accompanying each scheme is a planting diagram which names and num- `He's got his father's nose.' bers the plants required, so can be trans- ferred with ease to a shopping list. More- over what text there is, is a great deal more fun to-read than many another more 'liter- ary' gardening book.
We all need life made a little easier sometimes, especially when operating out- side our particular spheres of expertise. No one expects us to make up our own recipe for Truffle torte when we can riffle through Delia Smith, so why should anyone be sniffy about gardening recipes? In any event, so unusual is this approach even now, that, unless you choose to advertise the fact that you have followed a garden recipe, it is most unlikely that anyone will just guess.
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