Tony Kirkham - Horticulturist, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
An infectious read on the naming and arrival of plants
It is said that 'every picture tells a story'; in this case every plant has a tale to tell about the introduction of plants to our gardens today. Such are the stories told by the author through a walk around her own garden in Cornwall. It begins with a need to obtain Echium wildpretii she sees growing in New Zealand; this in turn triggers an urge to plant a living museum from scratch at home.
The planting scheme is modelled on plants collected from the ends of the earth by specially chosen collectors, in particular Sir Joseph Banks, Robert Fortune and theVeitch family.
Anyone with a thirst for information on the introduction of plants and how they arrived in our gardens will find this book an infectious read.
No bias towards any species is shown with the book covering everything from magnolias to Illicium, tulips to Trycyrtis, and the book is illustrated with photographs and prints from Curtis's Botanical Magazine. However I would suggest that Sir Joseph Banks is her favourite among collectors; indeed the book is dedicated to him.
The author has had to work hard to gather the information, and even more so to source plants from nurseries and friends, but her drive and obsession has combined a remarkable living museum with a wealth of information gleaned from the ends of the earth.