Michael Pembroke, Silk Silver Opium: The Trade with China that Changed History, Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne, 2025 This is a big book. Into its 341 pages Michael Pembroke, historian and naturalist, packs global, economic, political, religious and racial narratives from […]
Peter Bernhardt, UNSUNG HEROES OF POLLINATION More than the birds and the bees, CSIRO Publishing, 2026 This is a brilliant book for both garden historians and gardeners. Yes I know they often overlap! AGHS readers will possibly know the author […]
Derek Jarman’s garden at Dungeness has acquired an almost mythic status: a final garden made in the face of illness, exposure and political hostility. Thirty years after its first publication, Derek Jarman’s Garden, reissued by Timber Press with Howard Sooley’s […]
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, Penguin/ Random House 2025 What would be the most disturbing moral question any botanist, plantsperson, passionate gardener or naturalist could face? Imagine if you could only save a small proportion of the world’s seeds but […]
PRETTY DIRTY The life of flowers from creation to compost by Melanie Cecilia Stapleton, Hardie Grant Books, 2026 At first glance it is easy to classify this book as a coffee table book full of glorious floral photos, which it […]
I have often thought those who did the actual work in the great gardens of the past receive very little, if any, of the credit. Sandra Lawrence’s account of Ellen Willmott’s alpine garden and its gardener, Jacob Maurer, is a […]
Gardens that can save the world by Lottie Delamain (foreword by Isabella Tree), Timber Press, 2026 Hope is a curious feeling. On one hand, it is desperately needed as a counter weight to despair and as a motivation for positive […]
The secret life of a cemetery: the wild nature and enchanting lore of Père Lachaise by Benoît Gallot, Greystone Books, 2025 Translated from French, this account by Benoît Gallot, who is curator (what we would term ‘manager’) of Père Lachaise Cemetery […]
My review of The man who planted Canberra by Robert Macklin first appeared in The Weekend Australian on 21 February 2026. Walk into any bookshop today and you’ll be surprised by the number of books about trees. Publishers tell us too that anything […]
Shade – The promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource by Sam Bloch, Random House, New York, 2025 The author Sam Bloch is an American environmental journalist and his examples in Shade are largely based on observations from the United States, […]
Harriet Rix, The Genius of Trees: How trees mastered the elements and shaped the world, Vintage, 2025 The author says: This is a story of how tree-ish trees are and how, by being tree-ish they have woven the world into […]
When I read that the AGHS’s theme for 2026 was trees I immediately thought of Capital Trees, which not only fits the theme perfectly, but which is an excellent treatise on Wellington’s trees for both locals and visitors. For those from […]
Great Properties of the Riverina and Upper Murray by Richard Allen, author, and Kimbal Baker, images, The Miegunyah Press, imprint of Melbourne University Publishing, 2025 Sixteen remarkable properties in the Riverina and Upper Murray are the focus of this third volume in […]
Mark Laird, The Dominion of Flowers – botanical art & global plant relations, 2024, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Yale University Press Mark Laird has spent 40 years restoring the pleasure grounds of Painshill Park, Surrey (UK), […]
I was delighted when I opened the envelope containing a review copy of Peony. Out came a lovely hardback with a peony in full bloom on the cover. It’s precisely this voluptuousness that attracts so many. The author, Gail Harland, […]
Plant Collecting in Another Planet, E H Wilson in Australia 1920-21 by Margaret J Grose, UWA Publishing 2025 Ernest Wilson is best known for his plant collecting expeditions in China and the Far East between 1899 and 1910. He shipped […]
The latest issue of the International Review of Environmental History takes readers from the settler landscapes of nineteenth-century Aotearoa New Zealand to the post-1945 rise of herbicides in Northern Europe. Lingering in Aotearoa, readers will be immersed in geological debates about […]
If you were born in Britain, I expect privet hedges were very much part of your childhood. The garden design shown on p. 284 of Behind the Privet Hedge (Reaktion Books, Ltd, London, 2024) by Michael Gilson could be my father’s, […]
Nature’s Greatest Success – how plants evolved to exploit humanity by Robert N Spengler III, University of California Press, 2025 All gardeners and most garden historians spend quite a bit of time pondering which new varieties to plant and occasionally […]
Heroines of Horticulture by Stephan White, Schiffer, 2024 Books that celebrate women in gardening and horticulture are redressing the imbalance that exists between male and female practitioners in these fields. Stephan White’s book featuring women of the United States of […]
David J. Mabberley. Memoirs of The Peter Crossing Collection No. 1. 2024. 86 pages hardback without dust jacket. Black-and-white reproductions, some colour photographs. Price AUD 55. Available by request to peter@crossings.com.au This is a beautiful book, essential for anyone with […]
Andrew Darby’s new book, The Ancients: Discovering the world’s oldest surviving trees in wild Tasmania (Allen and Unwin, 2025), is a deep dive into the wilds of Tasmania. Seven chapters cover eight awe-inspiring trees, with chapter titles that hint at […]
Matthew Collins with Thomas Rutter, The Tree Atlas: the world’s most amazing trees and where to find them (Lonely Planet, 2024) The head gardener at the Garden Museum in London, Mathhew Collins, has collaborated with Thomas Rutter, horticulturist and garden writer, […]
This review was first published on the Landscape Australia website in March 2025. One of the main material considerations of landscape architecture is vegetation and plants: planting design, plant types, plant performance and plant control as examples. As a discipline […]
When I was asked to review Unforgettable Gardens, 500 Years of Historic Gardens and Landscapes, edited by Susannah Charlton (Batsford, 2024), my immediate thought was that I would be going on a journey down memory lane to the various gardens […]
This post alerts readers to Cold words (CSIRO, 2025) by Bernadette Hince, a former editor of Australian Garden History and also dictionary-maker and natural historian with a passionate interest in language and the world’s cold places. This ‘ice-breaking’ book collects the English […]
I marvel at the way some women of the Victorian Age donned their button-up boots, picked up their long skirts and petticoats to step onto a gang plank, ready to roam the world. While many of these intrepid travellers were […]
Funga Obscura (NewSouth, 2025) by Alison Pouliot is an extraordinary exploration of the hidden kingdom of fungi, presented through a unique combination of evocative writing and stunning photography. Pouliot takes us on a journey not just across the world but […]
Review of Enid Mayfield, Illustrated garden glossary, CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, March 2025 The author of this beautifully produced book is a botanical illustrator. Her glossary features at least one, and often several, of her own colour illustrations on every A4-sized […]
Here I reflect on writing Thrushwood Garden Evolution and Thrushwood Garden and Collections, both published in 2024. The Southern Highlands in NSW is well known for its beautiful gardens. Thrushwood (a 2,782m² property) is one of the most diverse and […]