No comments about Gardens and the Passion for the Infinite (Analecta Husserliana).

No comments about Gardens (Spotlights).

No comments about The Gardener's Way : A Daybook of Acts and Affirmations.

2 comments about The Origin of Plants: The People and Plants That Have Shaped Britain's Garden History.

1. This is an extensively researched and well-written book that investigates how garden plants arrived in England. The writer, a respected garden historian and fellow of the Linnean Society, has chosen to divide her material into centuries. She sets the scene with a look at Roman and Anglo-Saxon approaches to gardening and plants, then gets into more detail about plant immigrants, starting with the first century of the second millennium.

   To put the reader more clearly in the picture the writer starts each chapter (century) with a list of significant dates so we can see how historical events influenced the arrival of plants. In the twelfth century, for example, plant introductions were influenced by the Crusades as plants were brought to Britain from the eastern Mediterranean region.

   But this is not just a book about plants; it's also about the people associated with them. Sir Thomas More, for example, who in his book Utopia envisaged a town where everyone had a garden around their home.

   New plants are still arriving in England from around the world. A "living fossil" tree was discovered in Australia in 1994. Its Latin name is Wollemia nobilis (it was found by David Noble) and it is known as the Dinosaur pine. Plants have been arriving from every continent for centuries and shared back and forth especially to Europe and the US. Just as many new plants went from the New World to brighten English gardens, so seeds and plants were taken to North America by English settlers to create gardens in their new homeland.

   If you enjoy reading about the background and history of plants, who found them and how they came to us, you will enjoy this book. It has a very decent bibliography and deserves a place in every plantsman's (and woman's) library.




2. A wonderful reading for a plant lover. Provides a nice glimps into British history as well. A fortunate combination of Natural and Social history in one book.

1 comments about A Year at Kew.

1. I enjoyed this book - it reminded me of my trip to Kew gardens a few years ago.
   
   It is amazing to read about the changes as the year goes by, and all the activities behind the scenes
   
   Highly recommended!!

1 comments about A Year in the Garden: Four Seasons of Texture, Color, and Beauty.

1. A really lovely book - but not just photos. There's lots of good solid gardening info here too. I particularly appreciate the bloom-time schedules for the spring - I never can keep those different tulip types straight!

No comments about Thoughts of Home.

No comments about The Chelsea Gardener: Philip Miller, 1691-1771.

3 comments about In a Desert Garden: Love and Death Among the Insects.

1. I thoroughly enjoyed this intersting, thought provoking book from John Alcock. His thoughts on the modern American lawn should be required reading in the suburbs. The world would be a better place if all would read and comprehend his thoughts on connecting ourselves to the myriad wonders that go on all around us every day.



2. John Alcock loves Nature. Sometimes, though, getting from a suburban home to the wilderness he relishes can be tedious. So he brought some of his favoured Sonoran Desert environment to his front yard. Using a ramshackle Kubota tractor, he stripped away the layer of Bermuda grass surrounding his house. Over time, and with no little effort, he transformed that yard into a little pocket of desert environment. All this was more than an exercise in redecorating, however. Alcock studies insects, especially their mating rituals, and this transplanted environment gave him ample opportunity. Even if his practice of crouching over desert shrubbery at odd hours raised a few neighbourhood eyebrows.

   Alcock loves what he does, imparting his passion to us with lively prose. His academic background merges with his expressions of feeling to keep this book a delight to read. This blending places his writing skills in a comfortable [and comforting] niche somewhere between E. O. Wilson and John McPhee or David Quammen. He keeps you at ease as he builds the desert floor, inserts shrubbery and vegetables, and welcomes the bird and insect visitors to his creation. He protects the native species of plants and animals where possible, but doesn't summarily reject harmless exotics. And he carefully explains how to tell the difference.

   The underlying reason for the garden's transformation was to attract insects. Alcock is at his best in watching, analysing and explaining the life styles of desert bees, wasps, beetles and the rest. How did they develop those behaviours? What do their activities it mean to us humans, who are too often ardently killing the ones in our own gardens. He poses his questions with the puzzlement of fresh discovery. Then, adroitly picking through the available evidence - while calling out for further studies - he sifts through the optional answers to deliver the most likely, and most logical scenario. Yet, at no point are you being "lectured to". Instead, you are introduced to some of the awesome array of variation nature offers. This is no specialist's daunting lecture, but the confessions of a man who finds wonder in small things. It's also, of course, an example for any reader to enter his own yard to consider restoring it some state of origins instead of developer's artificiality.

   Alcock's view of his environment isn't wholly without concerns, however. There's no question of his concern for the impact of unrestricted "development". Phoenix, the urban hub of his home in Tempe, is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. With reconstructed landscapes, imported species, proliferating golf courses and a staggering consumption of water, this emblem of "progress" is another urban blight on the landscape. Alcock is uncomfortable with this situation, but nearly helpless to block it. His example of bringing some of the countryside into the city and restoring a bit of balance at a time is an example we should all consider carefully. His book's photo collection will make every gardener smile knowingly. The illustrations portray the object of his studies. With this combination he has produced an example of what a single individual [with some spousal support] can achieve, and told us all about it in this fine book. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]




3. This book relates some of the observations that Alcock made when he converted his grassy lawn in front of his Arizona house from grass to desert flora. In his neighborhood, residents dutifully maintained wide swaths of green grass through continuous fertilizing, watering, cutting, and trimming. They controlled pests and weeds through spraying, but if they missed one chemical treatment or watering, unwanted species would begin to take over. When Alcock first moved to the area, he went along with local custom for several years. Finally, he asked himself why he was working so hard to maintain grass at such high economic and environmental costs, when it was really the desert surroundings that he enjoyed. It took some effort to kill his lawn and replace it with a yard filled with thriving desert species, but maintenance eventually became much easier and cheaper once he had landscaping fit for the local environment.
   
   As an entomologist, Alcock greatly enjoys observing the insect life in his new yard. In this book, as well as describing how he transformed his yard, he also describes such insects as ladybugs, praying mantises, earwigs, desert termites, paper wasps, bees, grasshoppers, inchworms, whiteflies, mayflies, and aphids. The book is arranged into chapters by topic, including chapters on insects that control pests, compost lovers, insects that sting, camouflage experts, alien insects, and migrating insects. In reading the book, I was struck by how fascinating the lowly insect species can be. The book is written in an informal style appropriate for general readers. It is illustrated with black and white drawings by Turid Forsyth. Scientific sources are listed in a bibliography at the end of the book (but not referenced directly in the text), and there is an index.

No comments about Once upon a Windowsill: A History of Indoor Plants.