Gardening books sow the seeds of a fruitful festive season

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This was published 6 years ago

Gardening books sow the seeds of a fruitful festive season

The Christmas wish-list is about to get longer, with a profusion of new books for gardeners of every level and predisposition.

By Megan Backhouse

THE VOYEUR

Garden: William Dangar, Murdoch Books, $59.99

William Dangar's book, Garden, includes some of his most ambitious projects.

William Dangar's book, Garden, includes some of his most ambitious projects.

"I was a nightmare client. I must have done 15 schemes," landscape designer William Dangar says of his own Bondi garden, with its irregular-shaped pond sliding under his deck and Australian plants spilling onto the street. But the rest of the Dangar-designed gardens documented in this handsome book by photographer Prue Ruscoe and writer Karen McCartney no doubt presented their own dramas. A whole grove of mature olives was planted in one, a giant frangipani craned into another, and six months of bulldozing done on another site. The sub-tropical nature of these intensely layered affairs (most are in Sydney, many on the harbour) is the least of your problems if you are thinking about replicating them in Victoria. Put your feet up and enjoy the pictures.

Grand Melbourne Gardens, Thames & Hudson, $70

All those kicking themselves about the great open gardens they never visited can make amends with this book detailing 44 of Melbourne's best gardens. Lavish photographs by Kimbal Baker are accompanied by text (though never quite enough) by writer and architect David Wilkinson. While there are some courtyards (including those of artist Bill Henson and Mediterranean Garden Society president Caroline Davies) and a sprinkling of collections assembled by diehard plant addicts (think Andrew Rouse's vireya rhododendrons), the emphasis is on large, luxurious spreads that reflect a range of planting and design philosophies. If you're like me, you would happily settle for any of them, but better still, mine the book's pages for ideas and get cracking on your own space.

THE FOOD GROWER

Grow Your Own, Murdoch Books, $45

Urban farming has become the catchcry of our times but Angus Stewart and Simon Leake explain that it has been around for about 7000 years and outline how we can push the idea further. No space is too cramped or out-of-the-way. You don't even need soil – perlite and coconut coir will do. This is a meaty book with lots of information – for all levels of gardeners – on everything from propagating and vertical gardening to disease management. It also includes some inspiring case studies of people growing food against the odds. "Urban farming will never provide all your food needs," the pair suggest, but it will improve our health, green our cities and cut energy consumption.

Grow. Food. Anywhere, Hardie Grant Books, $45

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Dillon Seitchik-Reardon and Mat Pember, of the Little Veggie Patch Co, say one of the biggest barriers to edible gardening is people not knowing where to begin. This book's chatty style, poppy graphics and cheerful descriptions of soils, nutrients, watering and other essentials goes some way to amend this. The pair detail how to grow popular crops across a range of climate zones (from far north Queensland to New Zealand's South Island), throwing in "Nonno's tips" on, for example, how to get fruits as well as "vine hoo-ha" from your pumpkin.

THE PHILOSOPHER

Things My Garden Taught Me, Wakefield Press, $29.95

This book contains neither photographs nor descriptions of perfect gardens nor meditations on the endless pleasure of gardening. Instead Gabrielle Baldwin outlines the anxieties, mistakes, brutal hard work and occasional euphoria that have accompanied the making of a native garden 200 kilometres from her Melbourne home. Twenty years ago Baldwin and her husband made the impulsive purchase of one hectare of treeless pasture in South Gippsland. In 24 "lessons", she tells the story of what came next. More philosophical foray than growing manual, it is as much about the futility of striving for perfection as about how to tackle an invasive melaleuca. Near the end, Baldwin asks, would she do it all again. Her response is indicative of her considered take on all things gardening: "I cannot answer that question easily. Sometimes, probably only occasionally thus far, I would say no. Mostly it would be yes, but always after reflection."

BUDDING BOTANISTS

Genealogy for Gardeners, Crows Nest, $35

Learning the family names of plants is often relegated to the too-hard basket. But this book by Dr Ross Bayton and Simon Maughan makes a strong case for why they matter. Family names might be long and Latin but they can sometimes help gardeners make connections – about growth requirements or physical characteristics – between closely related plants. While there are more than 600 plant families, each containing a suite of genera, this illustrated book focuses on 75 of the ones represented most widely in gardens around the world. While plant genealogy can get pretty complicated – not to mention heated given the disagreements about some lineages – this book is geared towards gardeners rather than taxonomists and sticks to the basics.

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