The Plant Hunters for Kindle

Joseph Banks, the father of modern plant hunting by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1773)

 "Good God.  When I consider the melancholy fate of so many of botany's votaries, I am tempted to ask whether men are in their right mind who so desperately risk life and everything else through the love of collecting plants."

So said the famous Carl Linnæus in 1737.  

And in many way I think he was right, but also very glad that these men undertook the challenges, for gardens would be far duller places had they not.

The cover featuring Ernest Wilson's beautiful Lilium regale in the Min valley, Sichuan

Back in the 1990s I spent a year researching the history of the Lost Garden of Heligan.  During the course of this fascinating work I got up close and personal with so many of the plants introduced by those most brave and forgotten heroes of horticulture - the plant hunters.

Ernest Wilson, one of the most successful plant hunters employed by the Veitch Nursery

Inspired by the men, the tales of their adventures and both 'their' plants and the impact that they had had on garden fashions I, together with good friend and colleague Chris Gardener and brother, Will penned a tome entitled The Plant Hunters.  It did well, but after two hardback and two paperback the publishers decided not to reprint.

Discovered by Joseph Hooker, Rhododendron hodgsonii in the Zemu valley, Sikkim

Then came the wait for the rights to return.  Now we have re-edited the text   and are delighted to announce that today The Plant Hunters is published as a Kindle version.

The Plant Hunters features 10 of the most influential of all the plant hunters:  Sir Joseph Banks, Francis Masson, David Douglas, Sir Joseph Hooker, William and Thomas Lobb, Robert Fortune, Ernest Wilson, George Forrest and Frank Kingdon-Ward. 

Sir Joseph Hooker whose arrest in Sikkim changed the map of the Empire and whose Rhododendron discoveries kick-started 'rhododendromania'

Together these men discovered and introduced literally tens of thousands of new plants that revolutionised gardens all over the world.  Yet for the most part they did not make much money, but they surely suffered hardships and ill-health, occasionally giving their lives for the love of plant hunting.

Meconopsis lancifolia on the Daxueshan mountains of Yunnan

The Plant Hunters pays tribute to these men.  It tells their stories as people, it follows them to remote parts of the globe which had often times not been visited by Westerners before and tells of their adventures in the field.  It reveals the beautiful plants they discovered and explores how 'their' plants revolutionised garden fashions.

Even if I say so myself, these are damn good stories - and the book will  make the perfect Christmas read!

H is for Herbaceous Border

The Red Borders at Hidcote

Think of the Edwardian country house garden, of tea on the lawn, or The Importance of Being Ernest and like as not your mind’s eye will see a manicured garden with long, double herbaceous border. The herbaceous border is the feature that epitomizes the Arts and Crafts vernacular garden of the late 19th and early 20th century English garden.  However, contrary to popular belief Gertrude Jekyll did not invent said feature - although she certainly did improve and perfect it.

In fact the history of the herbaceous border is much older, and its origins can be traced back to the beds and borders of ‘old fashioned’ of hardy herbaceous plants that made the country cottage garden such an attractive garden form.  

Credit: The Flower Garden at Nuneham Courtenay, Oxfordshire,
1777 (w/c), Sandby, Paul (1725-1809)
 Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library

From these humble origins, beds of herbaceous perennials were used in a number of ways down the years.  In the 18th  century William Mason predated Alan Bloom by some 180 years by creating island beds at Nuneham Courtenay in Oxfordshire.  And in in his 1200-page epic Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1822) John Claudius Loudon prescribed that plants be arranged in rows, tallest at the back, shortest at the front, with much earth showing between them.  

The Twin Herbaceous Border at Arley Hall. Credit: Nick Turner

One of the earliest (twin) herbaceous borders as we know them today was planted at Arley Hall in the 1840s, but it was the pro-naturalistic writings of William Robinson and Miss Jekyll’s innovative use of informal drifts of plants arranged according to painterly colour theory that made the herbaceous border so popular in the early 20th century.  

Munstead Wood's herbaceous border by Helen Allingham

Perhaps the most famous of all herbaceous borders was Miss Jekyll's own in her garden at Munstead Wood, which is in excess of 300 feet long. 

The Sundial Garden at the Lost Gardens of Heligan..by ME!

Back in 1996, I, together with Chris Gardner, had the opportunity to research and recreate an early 20th century herbaceous border in a Jekyll-esque style in the Sundial Garden at the Lost Gardens of Heligan.  It was a fascinating project and lovely to see that it is still thriving. 

Unmistakably Oudolf

Herbaceous borders remain perennially popular, but recently the ‘perennial meadow’, an idea first put forward in the 1930s by the German nurseryman nurseryman Karl Foerster and developed by designers including James van Sweden and Piet Oudolf, in which fewer species are planted in large drifts, has re-emerged.