A Book of Gardening: A Practical Guide

by Penelope Hobhouse

Illustrated with photographs of Britain's National Trust Gardens and based on the techniques of the National Trust gardeners, this guide demonstrates how to create a strikingly ordered and beautiful garden

Genres: Gardening

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 1995

Reviews

[Alyssa Bohon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Few could pull off this feat of communicating history, garden culture, and British taste in such a cool and pleasing manner, and Penelope Hobhouse pulled it off. The inserted short pieces from various head gardeners were really interesting. The historical details were what made the book most fascinating - things like how the 1939-45 war (never referred to as WW2) affected some of the gardens, and how gardening fashions changed over the decades. Overall, this was a great combo of escape reading (a book vacation to England) and practical inspiration (a few times, I literally set the book down to go out to my garden to consider implementing something, like putting rocks around my ferns). I enjoyed the experience of plowing through all 239 pages.

The least enjoyable aspect of the book was the descriptions of widespread use of heavy pesticides and herbicides - more common in the 1980's than today. I'm sure a modern updated version would be more environmentally friendly. Natural gardening receives a section, but it is like the dawn of a day that has long since risen on England's gardens of the 21st century.