 BOOK
REVIEWS
The
Pleasure Garden
An Illustrated History of British Gardening
Anne Scott-James and
Osbert Lancaster
Frances Lincoln
Distributed by Bookwise
$NZ29.95
Reviewed by Mike Gowing
IF you've got an eye
for the quaint and slightly quirky, the re-publication of a 27-year-old
classic will delight you. It's an easy romp through England's gardening
past by a well-known garden writer whose cartoonist husband, the
late Osbert Lancaster, will be familiar to British newspaper readers
and whose work illustrates this book.
It kicks off, as the
author puts, with the Roman "peristyle and ends with a patio and
may seem a journey from courtyard to courtyard".
In between, the reader
is given insights into such gems as the monastic garden, the grand
French manner, the cottage garden and the London Square. The
Pleasure Garden is, for those who like their history digestible,
an informative, entertaining read. For the questing reader, a bonus
is the detailed bibliography.
Reproduced with permission from the former Weekend Gardener magazine. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the RNZIH
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