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These gardening books are just crying out to be written so we suggest some titles and authors.
Do not smoke your grass by Mary Wana
Turn your MP into Compost by Pete Substitute
Money saving tips add up by Alice Summ
Trollius, Yaks and other plant transportation by Dick van Bike
www.gardenerstips.co.uk/blog has now reached over 1000 tips on this blog. To celebrate this milestone I have looked for other notable 1000’s and have come up with the RHS Garden Finder. This publication advertises ‘More than 1,000 gardens to visit and enjoy‘ and is a weighty 500 page reference book edited by Charles Quest-Ritson. Available from Amazon for £10.50 including postage
Listing gardens to visit by country and county within the United Kingdom it also lists all the NCCPG National Collections. I guess the Philadelphus collections at Pershore College and The Hollies Park Leeds will smell just wonderful on the first of July.
Not to be out done on the tips front Readers Digest publish ‘1001 Hints and Tips for the Garden’ with more contributors than you can shake a pea stick at.
Amazon also sell a couple of books celebrating one thousand including ‘1000 Fuchsias’ by Meip Nijhuis and ‘Emeralds 1000 Green Flowers and 500 Choice Green Foliage Plants’ by Karen Platt
In addition to the RHS here are some web links to organisations maintaining gardens or retaining documents relating to gardens include:
Garden History Society (www.gardenhistorysociety.org
Kew Gardens http://www.kew.org/library/
English Heritage http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.2
Museum of Garden History (www.cix.co.uk/~museumgh/index.htm
National Trust (www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/
UK Database of Historic Parks and Gardens (www.york.ac.uk/depts/arch/landscapes/ukpg/database/index.htm
Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) (www.scan.org.uk/
Association of Garden Trusts (www.gardenstrusts.co.uk
A national organization representing County Gardens Trusts that are actively engaged in conserving, researching, documenting and caring for the heritage of parks, gardens and designed landscapes.
National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens or NCCPG is a charity that manages the system of National Plant Collections. Amongst other activities its member receive a biannual magazine Plant Heritage and information on conservation.
http://www.nccpg.com/page.aspx?Page=1
The web site is informative and can help you locate where and when you can visit a particular national collection and lists open days and events. You can also purchase the Plant Collections Directory for £5.
Win a bursary to design a garden at the Butterfly World site in St Albans. The design can be free format and has few boundaries so designers from all disciplines can be considered. The gardens when built and opened in 2009 will be the successor to the International Festival of the Garden previously on show at Westonbirt. For more information
http://www.futuregardens.org/pages/about_future.html
If you are interested in conceptual designs then the book ‘Avant Gardeners’ by Tim Richardson will be a useful resource available from Amazon for £17
101 Garden projects is an excellent small book offering simple but effective ways to transform a garden. The book is particularly aimed at the small garden. For example, tips include growing potatoes and herbs in pots. Most of the ideas are easy to execute and it simply provides a range of interesting ideas for you garden. There is a mixture between design ideas to growing vegetables and flowers.
Some of my favourite tips include:
The books is well illustrated with colour photos and simply explained. Would make an excellent gift for any gardener.