The Natural Gardener - Hardcover

Beardshaw, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0563488042 ISBN 13: 9780563488040

Publisher: BBC Books, 2003

Synopsis

Chris Beardshaw shows readers how to develop gardens that are in tune with nature, where plants will flourish with minimum effort. The book is based on his TV series, The Flying Gardener, in which Chris looks at plants in different habitats and discovers how nature achieves what the gardener strives for. He reveals how to put this knowledge into practice when selecting and cultivating plants for a domestic setting. The book begins with a chapter that enables gardeners to understand the conditions in which they garden and how these will affect their choice of plants. Chris identifies five types of garden ? rock, water, wood, wetland and meadow gardens - and explores each in detail in the following chapters. He includes practical information on plant selection, maintenance and pruning, and the book is peppered with fascinating facts about both domestic and wild gardens. The Natural Gardener proves that the best gardeners are those who understand the importance of the conditions in which they garden ? and that the best teacher is nature itself.

About this title

Review

Even the most committed of gardeners must occasionally straighten their aching back and wonder if it couldn't be a bit simpler. The enlightened message of The Natural Gardener is that it can. Attend properly to soil, climate and aspect, suggests Chris Beardshaw, and the gardener is in possession of enough information to begin to establish the kind of self-perpetuating environment nature achieves so effortlessly. This might seems obvious, but, as Beardshaw points out, it's surprising how many gardeners ignore the qualities of their soil, for example, planting anything they fancy and hoping for the best. He begins, therefore, with a chapter on Understanding Your Environment, which looks at the varieties of physical condition under which most of us garden, then groups these into five basic natural garden types towards which they seem to tend: rock, water, wetland, meadow and woodland. These terms suggest, perhaps, a scale beyond the gardener without access to a couple of acres of bog or mountainside, but this is not necessarily the case. Nature is infinitely scalable, and its equilibrium may be introduced into the smallest garden. Even a couple of small trees can create enough broken shade to establish a community of woodland plants; and an exposed, stony corner can stand in for an upland limestone pavement. This kind of gardening is all about plants and planting, and the care of plants, and paying attention to their needs; and in that sense (a very good one) is deeply traditional. --Robin Davidson

Review

Back to basics in the garden. Back to nature too. Not all gardeners are as tuned in to the rhythms of nature as they could be, and they make gardening much harder than it needs to be as a result. They are up against it a lot of the time, trying to grow the wrong plants in the wrong conditions. The principle here is that nature will complete what the gardener strives for, providing the gardener works with and not against garden type, setting and climate. This is above all a practical gardening book filled with details (and illustrations) about how to grow plants successfully in the right conditions. Gardener, know thy garden, is the message. The author has his own BBC2 series The Flying Gardener and is a presenter on Gardener's World.

About this edition

• Publisher: BBC Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0563488042
• ISBN 13: 9780563488040
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 168