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Even though early winter is now with us here, there is still plenty of autumn colour to enjoy. Recent high winds and rain have removed much of this autumn glory, but right now I am enjoying the golden glow from many rose leaves and other shrubs which shine like beacons in the winter sunshine. With Christmas and the New-Year of course are just around the corner, not to mention the new Millennium. Now is a good time to be sitting down near a roaring fire with a good gardening book. Long winter evenings offer the opportunity to read, or in my case re-read, some of the best English garden writers have to offer. What better Christmas gift for any gardening friend than a book packed full of good advice and humour to while away these dark winter nights?
In this, the second article about good gardening books, I look at yet more authors whose reputation has spread far and wide. I start with a writer who is the garden writer for the 'Financial Times' in the UK. Robin Lane Fox is not quite as well known has he ought to be to gardeners overseas. He teaches Greek and Roman history at Oxford University and is well known for his prize-winning book - 'Alexander the Great'. Mr Lane Fox is in charge of the gardens at New College, Oxford and also runs two gardens and his Oxford allotment. His weekly column in the 'Financial Times' started in 1970 has earned a keen following since. His best selling book 'Better Gardening' was published in 1982 by (Penguin Books - ISBN 0-14-046733-6) and gone has into several editions. It has a relaxed atmosphere and is packed with personal anecdotes. The author in not afraid to air his very definite likes and dislikes in a manner guaranteed to charm the most philistine amongst us. To take just one example of his witty style, I quote a 'taster' from this, his first book, concerning the feeding of hostas.
"The richer the soil, the more luxuriantly most of the best varieties will develop their lovely leaves. I have proved this by an extreme experiment. Last year, I built up a badly-drained bed to a height of two feet and raised it with the richest possible material. I used bag upon bag of finely shredded pig manure. It cost me very little from a nearby pig-farmer who shreds his slurry to the fineness of a John Innes compost. Emboldened by its obvious strength, I packed it in by the hundredweight, three-fifths pig manure to two-fifths of my heavy old loam. You are not a gardener until you have untied a festering bag of this shredded manure and mixed it up as top-dressing. It goes green in a trice. It stinks like a score of Black Berkshires rummaging around your lawn. It gives my hands a temporary rash and my earthworms the excitement of a lifetime. Within weeks, shoals of long worms writhe in and out of its lumps, pink, fat and sleek like well-oiled Loch Ness monsters. For the first few days, keep the windows of your house firmly shut. The smell has that richness which lodges, like catarrh, half way down your throat."
The copyright of the article Winter Words in English Gardening is owned by Graham Leatherbarrow. Permission to republish Winter Words in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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