A number of good books about the introduction of plants to the British Isles have been published over the last few years. There have been none like this one. Christian Lamb's steady progress toward Oxford University, via credits in botany and latin at School Certificate, was cut short by Hitler's war. Thus, she complains, her's (at 84) is an untrained mind. Untrained maybe, but a mind untrammelled by convention; witty and observant. Lamb presents, as they say, as an interesting paradox. On the one hand she is formal, precise, the able technician, in fact, quite the blue stocking.
There are good gardening tips here, if not on design, and careful taxonomy. On the other hand she is intrepid, impetuous, adventurous, and always fun. There is a ruthless streak that allows her to kill off some unwanted plants "sort of by mistake, on purpose", and another side that allows other plants, once she has had a taste of them, to be exiled to friends gardens where she longs to be invited to visit them.
The answer, perhaps, lies in the sea. The daughter of an admiral, herself a Wren, then a naval wife, she has the discipline of the quarterdeck in her system. Yet, with that has come an understanding of the romance of the sea, of travel and its dangers. One can understand why she became captivated by the life and adventures of Sir Joseph Banks, on whom she is an authority, and then also by those other botanical buccaneers who brought us the sinews of what we now choose to call the "English Garden". Look at the posthumous painting of Banks by Thomas Phillips for the Royal Society in 1822, reproduced in the book. 19th Century "Hunk" for sure. Her favourite gardens include Nigel Holman's incomparable woodland garden at Chyverton, Tregran, where she found the magic of the Camellia, Anthony, Ray Wood at Castle Howard, and Ninfa, south-east of Rome. These are all places where plants of her acquaintance (she doesn't do grasses or any member of the daisy family) can grow as they would wish to be. The wild streak wins, I think.
Is this just another monograph written in the autumn of an English housewife? You cannot be serious. Lamb, who can identify a Camellia cultivar at a greater distance than most drivers can read numberplates, traded in her membership of her local sailing club long ago to become a member of the Linnean Society of which she is now a Fellow. She is a well respected lecturer on the history of plants wherever she goes. Taking the publishing into her own hands means that she has been able to insist that that pictures in the book actually follow the text. These may not be great works of photography. Lamb battled with prejudice to master a digital camera to get them, but they do show exactly what she has in mind when writing about plants and exactly what they look like in her own garden.
Just as anecdotes cascade onto the pages of this book, as might waves on the shores of Botany Bay, so also each plant in her garden tells some different story of adventure, endurance, ingenuity or intrigue. The story of people and the search for ornamental plants is not often so well told. You want to see her garden? If you do you will be very, very, very, lucky. Her garden is for herself, her family and friends and for hunting "moonbathing" slugs with grandchildren. Anyway, she says "The book shows all the plants in flower at the same time. In my garden I have to wait a whole year for the plants to come round. It is best to buy the book"
Shame on the mainstream publishers who thought this book beyond them. All praise to Lamb for writing it and then having the courage to have it published. It will, I think, be treasured as long as we in Britain grow exotic plants from what we think of as "the ends of the earth".