Aspirational Gardening

There are two types of gardening books out there. First, there are the ones which dispense useful and helpful advice and knowledge for plants and conditions in your area. Then there are the ones with beautiful glossy photographs of gardens you can never achieve living in your half-frozen climate and without the services of a small army of gardeners. Be warned: the books in this post definitely fall into the latter category.

That said, it is fun to read such fantasy gardening fare from time to time. But until I win the $50 million and can buy my castle in England, I am stuck gardening here on Mother Nature's terms, and such pretty gardens remain fiction - the stuff of shiny photographs in big coffee table books. My most recent trips to the library have resulted in an armful of gardening books on various topics. I give you the results below.

I love flowers and no garden is complete without at least a few flowering plants. From the plethora of books showcasing individual flowers, I selected two: The English Roses: Classic Favourites & New Selections by David Austin, and Gardening With Tulips by Michael King.

Of the two, Gardening With Tulips was by far the more useful. After reading this book, you will want to turn your backyard into a field of blossoming tulips, a la the tulip fields of Holland. King discusses all the different varieties of tulips in detail, and discusses the origins and development of the tulip as we know it today. He also gives a lesson on how to plan gardens with tulips. This section is less helpful, as he doesn't always include photos of what he's talking about, and references numerous other plant species by Latin name, which does help to clarify which plant he's talking about, but is of no help to the beginning gardener who doesn't know what plant he means! Gardening is an inherently visual exercise, so more photos of the plants he wants to mix with tulips and the design combinations would have improved this book. One helpful resource, however, is a helpful section at the end which lists tulips by colour. You can look through the entire red section and pick out all of the red tulips you want, and so on by colour. This book has inspired me to scatter some tulip bulbs throughout my garden plans.

English Roses is significantly less useful. Apparently English roses are a specific kind of rose grown in England, developed by the author, David Austin. I would highly doubt that these roses would grow well in Canada without serious care and maintenance. Even the author discusses the wholesale use of spraying and pesticides on the roses. Some of the roses are quite pretty, but most of them are too fluffy and showy for my taste. With their multitude of petals, they look like overgrown peonies. If you want peonies, plant peonies. I want roses that look like roses - not fat pillows of curly petals. English roses, apparently, are not to my taste. Austin discusses the development of the English rose in quite exhaustive detail, and then discusses each new variety specifically, with a photo illustrating the rose. He does acknowledge that some of the roses look like peonies, but apparently these roses bloom all year, whereas peonies only bloom once a spring - which is fine with me! Further, any problem in your garden can be solved by these roses, apparently. They are perfect shrubs, perfect for climbing, perfect as a cut flower, etc.. This book is for English rose enthusiasts only.

Next, I turned to books to help me plan my garden: Trees for the Small Garden by Simon Toomer and Woodland Gardens: Shade Gets Chic ed. by C. Colston Burrell.

I had high hopes for Trees for the Small Garden to help me find some pretty trees that won't overwhelm my landscaping and dwarf my house. I was sadly disappointed. The book does have some useful general information at the beginning on selecting, planting, and caring for a tree, but it really lets you down in the tree index. Of all the 80 individual tree species listed as suitable for small gardens, there were exactly 15 that could be grown in Zone 3 (my climatic zone). Really? Now how helpful is that? According to the climate maps at the back of the book, the majority of Canada is in Zone 2 - which would render this book useless for the majority of Canadians, there being only 4 trees which are hearty to Zone 2 described in the book. Plus, there were a few trees that I have seen grown here rated as a Zone 4. And most of the trees which were rated a Zone 3 I already knew about and didn't want (such as many evergreens). I was looking for variety. I do have a tree section in my terrifically useful Best Garden Plants for Alberta (which I have talked about before), but I was looking for a book specifically on smaller trees for smaller lots, and not the giant oak and elm behemoths that would shade my entire lawn and tower over my house. I suppose I should take my own advice to stick to books from your own region when looking for specific plants.

Fortunately, I had more luck with Woodland Gardens. This sweet little book dispenses general advice on how to create a woodland garden in whichever region of woods you live in. It has some excellent basic tips on how to kill grass, for example, and how to pick plants. It has different pieces by gardeners who live in different areas on how they created a woodland garden that fits in with the climate and woodlands of their region. Finally, it has a list of plants specific to each region useful for creating a woodland garden. Anyone who has shade and is interested in gardening in the shade should check out this useful book.

Finally, I read an interesting book on restoring a garden (at an Edwardian English manor house, no less!) in Gertrude Jekyll's Lost Garden: The Restoration of an Edwardian Masterpiece, by Rosamund Wallinger.

I "discovered" Gertrude Jekyll when I was reading about roses in The Garden Primer. The author suggested I check out a book about roses by Gertrude Jekyll. I couldn't find that book, but found this one instead.

Gertrude Jekyll was a landscape designer and gardener. She designed several gardens and landscapes in England during a period of time that corresponded with the Arts and Craft movement. She was renowned for using plants in a way that suggested the plants were naturally growing, and for her broad strokes of colour. She is, I modestly suggest, the mother of modern gardening design.

The author purchased the Edwardian manor house with attached, overgrown Jekyll garden. On finding out that it was a Jekyll garden, and that, miraculously, the original plans for the garden had survived, the author and her husband decided to restore the gardens to their original condition - a back-breaking enterprise that would take years. Her story is recounted in this book.

The book inspires envy (jade-green lawns of grass in January!) and awe (patches of bluebells around a wood bench under new-leaved trees, a homemade wall with flowers growing out of the crevices, daffodils and other spring bulbs growing wild in the grass under a flowering apple tree...). It is interesting to read about the author's struggles and triumphs as she tries to restore the garden. It is hard to read Jekyll's writing on the plans, and many of the plant varieties she used are no longer available today. It certainly makes my attempts at landscaping seem simple! It was an enjoyable read about another gardener's struggle, and ultimate triumph.

So, until I get my English manor with its staff of gardeners, I will have to confine myself to reading about other's gardens while I work on my own little plot of earth.