Gardens
Garden leaves
Ursula Buchan
Dora Appletree's new book of garden- ing reminiscences, My Garden at Whitsun, is sure to delight her numerous fans and make her many more. With wise words to say on such diverse subjects as Syringa vulgaris and the common lilac, a hundred and one uses for dried hydrangea flower heads, and how to make your own larch- pole arbour, this is surely a fitting sequel to Spring in my Garden, The Summer Gar- den, Gardening in Autumn and Wintry Gardens. This lavishly illustrated book contains many photographs which have become old favourites. We can only hold our breaths and wait, impatiently, for My May Day Bank Holiday Garden. I predict that no book will take the gardening public so much by storm this Christmas as Some Favourite Gesneriads of Central Africa by Dr Phil Ode, a heart- warming account of those cuddly little
saintpaulias, known to their devotees, in bathrooms up and down the country, as `African violets'. But, behind the fun, this book has a serious purpose, exposing the connection between their chromosome count and a regrettable weakness for poly- ploidy. Lavishly illustrated with pen-and- ink drawings of the parts of the flower and hilarious monochrome photographs of Dr Ode's party of botanists pitching camp in the Zairean jungle, this book is a must for any gardener's unwearoutable sock or stocking.
I wish I could say the same for Designing and Planting Your Garden by Vi Burnham.
This is a very disappointing book with only limited appeal to the gardening public. It sets out to advise the gardener on how to make his (or her) garden a place of tranquil beauty and harmonious colour for 12 months of the year, using plans, three- dimensional drawings and colour photo- graphs. Looking out of place on even the smallest coffee table, this book could only be of any use to those 'oddballs' who spend more time working in their gardens than talking about them.
At last! A Japanese gardening book which loses almost nothing in translation.
Taiotoshi Kosotogari's Cherry, Stone and Water looks set to blow a gale of fresh air through those fuddy-duddy gardens locked
in a Jekyliesque time-warp. We can only hope that space will now be found at Sissinghurst or Hidcote for areas of raked gravel, bonsai maples and a few impec- cably chosen and immaculately placed rocks. What a strange irony that the photographs which lavishly illustrate this book were all taken with a Hasselblad!
For light relief, I turned to The Ducal Gardens of Basilicata by the Principessa
Rigovernatura-Sporca (with Sandy Poole).
This fascinating and absorbing book bears ample witness to the wealth of talent there is amongst the ducal families of this favoured spot, the 'instep of Italy'. How happy and privileged one feels to be beckoned into their ancestral demesnes, crowded with Mediterranean cypresses (sadly, in places, suffering from the wretched cypress disease which has swept Italy in recent years), box hedges and fountains. It is a great shame that, when the photographs were taken for the lavish illustrations, an unusual summer drought should have dictated that the fountains were not playing nor the grass watered.
Nevertheless, the gardens are enchantment itself and deserve to be more widely known. If I have a quibble, it is that, although the nicely spoken girl from the PR firm who sent me the book assured me that the Principessa was 'really closely involved and whatever' in the preparation of the book, it is not always easy to tell, in relation to any particular portion of the text, whether the Principessa or Miss Poole should take the credit.
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