COTTAGE GARDEN FLOWERS

In this classic 1960s gardening book, Margery Fish's advice and enthusiasm for horticulture has stood the test of time. She guides the gardener through techniques for creating and maintaining a cottage garden with humour and ease and covers plants that grow easily and naturally in British soil. She saw the traditional cottage garden style disappearing around her and has brought together old fashioned plants and contemporary plants in the same vein. Today's mixed borders are a direct descendant of her style created at East Lambrook Manor in Somerset, now open to the public. She includes easy, adaptable bulbs, perennials and shrubs such as Astrantia, columbines, daffodils, daisies, Dianthus, foxgloves, hollyhocks, Japonica, old roses, Phlox, Primula or Virburnum. These traditional plants have now reestablished their place at the heart of garden design. Graham Rice, the former London Evening Standard gardening correspondent, has reviewed the plant names in the original text and provides a plant name section at the back of the book to allow readers to identify current plants from the old Latin names in the text. Now Spring is really here, we love the sweet-smelling herbs chapter where Margery muses 'I wonder if the golden variegated form we grow today is the same as the gilded rosemary that Parkinson wrote about in 1629?' And we learn that Balm of Gilead is not completely hardy but it scrapes through most winters. 'It came from the Canary Islands in 1697 and has been lurking in humble little gardens ever since.' 116 unillustrated pages and the title banding has left grease marks on an otherwise beautifully floral covered Batsford hardback.