Garden Reading Installment #3

Untamed garden

 "Read-a-little, garden-a-little, read-a-little, garden-a-little, weed, weed, weed...."  reminds me of that song  from The Music Man. Moving on. Yesterday's installment from Katherine Swift's The Morville Year was about those plants that move or seem to spring up out of nowhere. I've got a whole garden that seems to be that way.

Once upon a time I too set out to tame Nature by planting a garden and she just laughed at me and my hubris. But mankind continues to try to tame her with its borders and formal garden lay-outs. Granted I never started out that way. As a novice gardener I chose the things that looked pretty to me and planted them where ever I thought they would look best. Little did I know about the plants I chose or whether or not they would flourish in the spots I had planted them. The tag said full sun, but in reality it needed partial sun, or part-sun really meant full shade. You  get the picture. Things died. I cried. I tried again.

A foxglove which has
self-seeded.

I got wiser. I borrowed books from the library and spent time learning about the growing conditions of plants. I amended my soil. I watched and timed the number of hours certain locations in the yard received sun light. I started over. I shuffled plants around and lo and behold things took. Things thrived. Things spread. Oh how things spread. Phlox took over. Spiderwort wove a web throughout the garden. Even the white campion sprinkled itself about. This summer I am challenged with trying to bring it all under some semblance of control. I will not say order for I know there will never be order. As a science teacher I know that there is no control in Nature, the name of the game is called ENTROPY.

One challenge about reading Swift's book is the difference in the language of plants. She sprinkles the Latin formal names throughout like everyone should know what she is writing about. Then there are the common names for plants, which is the whole reason scientists went to a formal method of naming species in the first place. I find that I have to keep my phone close by so that I can look up on Google images the plants which she is discussing. Often I am familiar with them and other times I am not. As a more seasoned gardener (I will not call myself a master gardener just yet. I need to get through a few more seasons for that.), I know better than to run out and try to acquire the lovely things she writes about. For one thing, I know that the climate of England and New England are not the same and some plants will simply not flourish here in my garden. I have learned my lesson there; plant what will work. That's why she has her lovely garden open to the public so that people like me can go visit and see those plants which we can not grow at home.

Ever feel like you're tied up in knots

Charlecote Park: Warwick CV35 9ER, UK

The library had a spring book display with the whimsical name of: The Cover Was Green, and from it I chose Geoff Nicholson's A Knot Garden.(By the way this link does not show the cover of the paperback edition that I got at the library.) This is a mystery story centering on the death of Richard Wisden a garden designer and minor TV celebrity. The biggest challenge in reading this story was that ever changing first person narration. A collection of characters who each tell their stories all interconnect to form the "knot" of the plot. Imagine a time when you have tried to pull apart a tangled necklace chain or wayward ball of yarn and just when you think you have got the right part to pull and unravel the whole mess you discover that you seem further from the solution than when you started. No spoilers here except to say that by the end all is revealed.

Knot garden as viewed
from the dining room.

I had the opportunity to visit in Warwickshire county at the end of April and visited the National Trust property of Charlecote Park. There in the rear of the property on the edge of the river Avon was a beautiful knot garden as pictured here glimpsed out of the dining room window. The grounds were lovely and everything was blooming. A far cry from the slow start to spring back home in New England.

Primroses in a container garden
lining the entryway. 

Thatched cottage outbuilding.

New favorite quote

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. - Marcus Tullius Cicero

I went to the library today to return some items and to find some new stuff to read. Blogged about Susan Hill last week and as she was a new author to me (introduced by a web search and recommended by my favorite librarian), I figured I would try some of her other titles (see previous post on Howards End is on the Landing). I've brought home The Man in the Picture, a ghost story, and The Various Haunts of Men, a detective story and one of my favorite genres.

The other titles I chose today include: Simonetta Agnello Hornby's The Almond Picker, The Roots of my Obsession: Thirty great gardeners reveal why they garden edited by Thomas C. Cooper, and The Roots of the Olive Tree by Courtney Miller Santo. Then I get to the circulation desk to check out my choices and the Cicero quote above is on a magnet on the filing cabinet behind the desk. He was so right! Two of the best things in life are having a beautiful garden to work in, or sit in to read; and the other is to have either your own private library or collection of books, or the great blessing of a good public library. What's even better is reading books about gardens, gardeners, or nature. Two pleasures in one!