Beth Chatto’s Green Tapestry - Softcover

Chatto, Beth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0004140648 ISBN 13: 9780004140643

Publisher: HarperCollins Illustrated, 1999

Synopsis

Beth Chatto is one of the great ‘names’ of gardening. Her knowledge is rooted in over 35 year’s practical experience, and she is celebrated for her use of unusual perennials, as well as her mastery of difficult growing conditions.

Beth’s beautiful Essex garden, created from wasteland in the mid-1960s, is a world-renowned site where an extraordinary range of plants is cultivated. In this book she explains how she has used different natural variations of the site to create widely differing habitats. Chapters include:

Principles of Planting
· The Entrance Garden
· The Open Walks
· The Shade Garden
· The Dry Garden
· The Reservoir Garden

Her rules of planting are not difficult to follow: select the plants that will thrive naturally in the conditions you have in your garden, and successful cultivation should follow!

The book also includes a comprehensive Plant Guide and Glossary

About this title

Review:

Beth Chatto has a formidable reputation as a plantswoman. Beth Chatto's Green Tapestry is a celebration of her garden in Essex, where over 35 years she has triumphantly overcome quite extraordinarily difficult growing conditions to create a flowing sequence of different garden environments using the natural variations of the site. Her Entrance Garden, Open Walks, Shade and Dry Gardens are powerfully distinct and beautiful creations, filled with plants chosen not just for their visual qualities but also for their ability to co-exist harmoniously within the specialist ecosystems she has developed. The simple but illuminating wisdom of her planting principles fills the book. Her knowledge is immense--she seems to forget nothing about her plants--and she shares it generously, recounting her failures as well as her successes. In the end, the lesson learned is that plants must be respected and not forced into unsuitable habitats. The sections on the different parts of her garden are complemented by helpful and informative lists of suitable perennials, their habits, their likes and dislikes, their foibles, above all their beauties. Aimed particularly at those new to gardening, Green Tapestry makes an inspiring introduction to the pleasures of plants. --Robin Davidson

Review:

‘I know of no more honest writer. She describes as she sees, imaginately but never over the top; always so as to make me murmur an echoing
“this is as it is”. Everything is from direct observation and experience. She is never woolly off the point. Beth Chatto knows how people think and behave and pinpoints our foibles and weaknesses with commnsense and understanding.’
Christopher Lloyd

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Illustrated
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0004140648
• ISBN 13: 9780004140643
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 192