• Biggs, Matthew. RHS Lessons from Great Gardeners (Mitchell Beazley, 2015). This was both a fascinating read and a disappointment, often leaving me unsatisfied. As one might expect with a Royal Horticultural Society publication, this is a physically attractive volume with appealing illustrations and photos. And Biggs does provide a series of informative 4/6-page introductions to eminent gardeners, ranging from Somai (16th-century Japanese) to Dan Hinkley (an American born in 1953). It should be no surprise that 20 of the 50 members in this hall of fame are from the United Kingdom, particularly emphasizing a sequence of influential British gardeners active from the 1860s to the 1960s: Thomas Hanbury, William Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll, Ellen Willmott, Edward August Bowles, Lawrence Johnston, Henry Duncan McLaren, Frederick Stern, Vita Sackville-West, Margery Fish, and Beatrix Havergal. While I was familiar with most of the Brits, I particularly appreciated the profiles of gardeners influential in other countries: Jacques Majorelle (Africa), Mildred Blandy (Portugal), Roberto Burle Marx (South America), Lelia Caetani (Italy), Greta Sturdza (France), Carl Ferris Miller (South Korea), Bev McConnell (New Zealand), and Jeremy Francis (Australia). Despite these positives, much of the text was rather generic and superficial. For example, Biggs provides a page of “lessons” from each gardener, but it was rare that these lessons conveyed unique or illuminating insights. For example, we are told that Vita Sackville-West believed gardeners should “choose white-flowered plants carefully” and “successive head gardeners have revised the planting schemes at Sissinghurst in the spirit of the garden, replacing old with newer, similar and better varieties. . . .” It’s just not clear such lessons are particularly insightful or revelatory.
A link to the rest of the nine-page bibliography: Garden Book Annotated Bibliography (Feb 19)