Robin Hanbury-Tenison
It is most unusual for an octogenarian to publish her first book, for it to prove to be a horticultural tour de force must be unheard of. From page one you cannot help liking and becoming involved in this self-confessed plantaholic's passionate obsessions and her quests, both physical and literary, for flowers and their discoverers. There cannot be a gardener in the country whose appreciation of his or her garden will not be enhanced by sharing them.
This book is full of uncontrived surprises. With her exquisite and witty use of language she makes even the most ignorant of gardeners, like me, feel involved and we are swept along by her eloquent enthusiasm. It had me rushing out to look at certain shrubs with new eyes. I never knew that my Parrotia persica was named after a Dr Parrot who was the first man to climb Mount Ararat. Or that our Pieris was first grown at Caerhays Castle by my wife's cousin, J.C.Williams, from seed brought back from the frontiers of Burma and China by George Forrest in 1910, at the same time as all those famous camellias.
Christian Lamb revels in everything to do with gardening. She illustrates the creation and continual development of her own small garden on the Cornish coast, cleverly blending photographs, botanical prints, history and description in such a way that we learn all about the plants without losing sight of the practicalities. At one moment she is writing "finding something unknown or unexpected about a special plant's collector...is as exciting as finding the plant itself", and she has travelled adventurously all over the world in search of her favourites; at another, she is re-potting terrestrial disa orchids in her own greenhouse "...handling their delicate pure white roots - some spindly thin, others fat and squat, ... - is pure pleasure, and removing the occasional daring and deadly slug pure sadism. "
Confidently original in style and structure, it is all so eminently readable that it really is a shame she didn't start publishing books sixty years ago. I do hope we will be treated to at least one more feast by this author.