Turning over a new leaf: gardening books chart our changing outlook

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This was published 3 years ago

Turning over a new leaf: gardening books chart our changing outlook

By Megan Backhouse

Living Outside: Reviving the Australian Modernist Garden by Sharon Mackay and Diana Snape; Photography by Christopher Frederick Jones, Thames & Hudson, $70

Informality, functionality and the widespread use of native plants are some of the key themes of this book that – like the similarly titled 1950s modernist classics Landscape for Living and Gardens are for People – has something of the manifesto about it.

Mackay and Snape discuss how gardens can reflect our cultural identity and improve our collective future. They talk about gardens that have “a sense of responsibility and purpose beyond individual objects and individual pleasure”.

A subtropical garden in Bundjalung, NSW, designed by CHROFI.

A subtropical garden in Bundjalung, NSW, designed by CHROFI.Credit: Christopher Frederick Jones

An Anglesea garden designed by Paul Thompson.

An Anglesea garden designed by Paul Thompson.Credit: Christopher Frederick Jones

<i>Living Outside: Reviving the Australian Modernist Garden</i>.

Living Outside: Reviving the Australian Modernist Garden.Credit: Thames & Hudson

More than “just ornamental backdrops”, the 18 gardens they profile (all created over the last decade in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland) are resilient, respond to the site, adapt to changes in the weather and contribute more than they take away.

But as Frederick Jones’ photographs make plain, these gardens are drop-dead beautiful too. Neither showy nor fussy, they just feel right. And, crucially, they are never set in stone. They continue to evolve after the design and planting are finished, and for the clients who continue to inhabit and maintain them, the act of gardening “becomes part of living”.

While Mackay and Snape take a big-picture view of the benefits of a modernist approach in this time of rapid urbanisation and escalating environmental pressures, they also get down to the nuts and bolts, detailing the dimensions, climate and key plants of each garden.

Plantopedia: The Definitive Guide to Houseplants by Lauren Camilleri and Sophia Kaplan, Smith Street Books, $59.99

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Camilleri and Kaplan describe interiors as if they are landscapes but, instead of environmental challenges such as clay soil or salty wind, they talk about architectural constraints such as window placement and air conditioning.

As with all forms of gardening, the best course of action is to work with what you’ve got and to plant to the given conditions. Camilleri and Kaplan say one of those conditions is how much gardening experience you have and the level of care you are prepared to provide.

Mini Monstera (Rhaphidophora tetrasperma)

Mini Monstera (Rhaphidophora tetrasperma)Credit: Jacqui Turk

Houseplant display.

Houseplant display.Credit: Anna Batchelor

<i>Plantopedia: The Definitive Guide to Houseplants</i>.

Plantopedia: The Definitive Guide to Houseplants.Credit: Smith Street Books

After all, not everyone is going to be up for regularly spritzing foliage with a water mister to increase humidity (as some plants including Alocasia zebrina like) or placing ice cubes on top of the soil to keep roots cool on hot days (a useful trick for Darlingtonia californica). Sometimes Devil’s Ivy (resilient, fast growing, almost impossible to kill) or Spider Plants (unfussy, incredibly low maintenance) are what’s required.

Camilleri and Kaplan, the duo behind Sydney-based indoor plant delivery service Leaf Supply, detail the habits and needs for more than 150 plants that can do well indoors and they make the case for indoor gardening to be more than a passing fashion. While the popularity of houseplants has always waxed and waned (and has now been waxing for more than a decade,) Camilleri and Kaplan say indoor growing should be a permanent fixture as cities get denser and open spaces smaller.

The Garden: Elements and Styles by Toby Musgrave, Phaidon Press, $100

If you had any doubt that everything old becomes new again, this book will allay them. Charting the diversity of garden styles and elements back to Roman times, Musgrave lays bare the constant interplay of ideas across different times and places.

He tackles the different subjects alphabetically (starting with allée and ending, some 210 entries later, with zeitgeist) and provides extensive cross-referencing between styles and elements, thereby emphasising areas of common ground.

A borrowed view in the garden at Plas Brondanw in Wales.

A borrowed view in the garden at Plas Brondanw in Wales.Credit: Richard Bloom

<i>The Garden: Elements and Styles</i>.

The Garden: Elements and Styles.Credit: Phaidon Press

In Wild Garden, for example, predominantly about the pioneering work of Irishman William Robinson (1838-1935) he segues into talk about contemporary wildlife spaces and is also cross referenced with, among other styles, the Prairie Garden, which has its roots in late 19th-century Chicago and which is, in turn, cross-referenced with the New Perennial Planting that began to appear in Europe a century later. Even a more general entry such as Seating, opens up links between everything from ancient amphitheatres to contemporary outdoor kitchens.

The strength of this book is this complex web of back-stories and inspiration points, and the plethora of beguiling photographs (by a wide range of photographers) that drive the book’s constant-evolution-of-ideas message home.

A Brush With Birds: Paintings and Stories From The Wild by Richard Weatherly, Hardie Grant Travel, $60

An upsurge in bird watching was one of the silver linings of COVID-19. During Victoria’s hard lockdown, people who had never before taken much notice of avian life began training binoculars and keeping lists.

But Weatherly has been doing this since he was a child. Growing up on a large cattle and sheep property near Mortlake in the 1950s he was chasing after a Pacific Black Duck at the age of six, drawing Yellow-rumped Thornbills at seven and, was still a young boy when he had worn out his copy of What Bird is That?

A gouache study of a Flame Robin.

A gouache study of a Flame Robin.Credit: Richard Weatherly

A gouache study of a Southern Ground Hornbill.

A gouache study of a Southern Ground Hornbill.Credit: Richard Weatherly

<i> A Brush With Birds: Paintings and Stories From The Wild</i>.

A Brush With Birds: Paintings and Stories From The Wild.Credit: Richard Weatherly

His fascination grew and this book describes a life spent watching, painting and befriending birds.

Weatherly’s modesty (“I am not an ornithologist; I am not a specialist of any kind”) belies the beauty of his drawings and the remarkable stories he tells about learning to paint, training falcons, becoming a regenerative farmer (before the term became popular) and his extensive travels to observe birds (including eight years painting Fairy wrens in Australia and New Guinea for a book published in 1982.)

While birds are the central thread here, Weatherly insists this is not a “bird book”. “It is a book about birds, and animals and people ... birds exist as part of a complex ecosystem and to watch them and understand them requires an interest in plants, animals, insects and geology.”

This book is sure to help kindle that interest.

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