The Grove: A Nature Odyssey in 19 1/2 Front Gardens by Ben Dark

£16.99

Bookseller review by Diane

This is such a lively, youthful and informed take on garden history. Ben Dark gets so much from his restricted format of considering just one plant from 19 front gardens in one street that he regularly walks down (the half a garden is the front garden he wants for his own home). I love the way he presents front gardens as part of the public realm for the visual, imaginative and intellectual pleasures that looking at them can give us as we pass by.

 

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ISBN: 9781784727383 Category: Tags: , ,

Description

There is a renewed interest in the nature on our doorsteps, as can be seen in the work of amateur botanists identifying wildflowers and chalking the names on the pavements.

But beyond the garden wall lies a wealth of cultivated plants, each with a unique tale to tell. In The Grove, award-winning writer and head gardener Ben Dark reveals the remarkable secrets of twenty commonly found species – including the rose, wisteria, buddleja, box and the tulip – encountered in the front gardens of one London street over the course of year.

As Ben writes, in those small front gardens ‘are stories of ambition, envy, hope and failure’ and The Grove is about so much more than a single street, or indeed the plants found in its 19 1/2 front gardens. It’s a beguiling blend of horticultural history and personal narrative and a lyrical exploration of why gardens and gardening matter.