Food and travel
This week’s review comes to you from Dr Jacqueline Newling, an historian, gastronomer and museum curator. This is not a garden book but one that might be of interest to those who love not only gardens but also the food […]
Category: Book News
Brave the Wild River
Rosemary Purdie reviews Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon, by Melissa L Sevigny, published by W W Norton & Company, 2023 ‘In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada […]
Napoleon’s Garden Island
Book review by Tim Gatehouse In Napoleon’s Garden Island – lost and old gardens of St Helena, South Atlantic Ocean (Kew Publishing), Professor Donal P McCracken dispels the common perception that the island of St Helena is only significant as […]
The World of Mab Grimwade
Sandra Pullman reviews Mab, The World of Mab Grimwade by Thea Gardiner (The Miegunyah Press, Imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2023) This beautiful book celebrates the life of Mabel Louise Grimwade née Kelly (1887–1973). The author, Thea Gardiner, gives […]
Fevered Planet – how disease emerges when we harm nature
Dr Kim Loo, general practitioner, and member of Doctors for the Environment Australia responds to Fevered Planet by John Vidal, Bloomsbury, 2023, Doctors for the Environment started more than 20 years ago when three doctors sat around a kitchen table […]
The crucial role of seeds in natural and human history
Fiona McMillan-Webster, The Age of Seeds, Thames and Hudson, 2022 Reviewed by Francesca Beddie McMillan-Webster likes word play and the occasional pun. At the AGHS conference in Ipswich, she used a double entendre, ‘A date with history’, to introduce her talk. […]
Visions of Nature by Jarrod Hore
Reviewed by John Dwyer, QC, PhD This book is disappointing in a number of ways. Its intent was ‘to revive the work of late 19th century landscape photographers that shaped the environmental attitudes of settlers in the colonies of the […]
Historic Gardens of Perth
The West Australian Branch is pleased to announce that Historic Gardens of Perth: European Settlement to Modernism is now available for purchase. With approximately 200 hundred pages of historic photographs, maps, plans, artworks and text, Historic Gardens of Perth: European settlement to Modernism, […]
Succulentomania
Caroline Ball, A Splendour of Succulents & Cacti: Illustrations from an Eighteenth-Century Botanical Treasury (Oxford, 2023) reviewed by Clive Probyn, OAM In Henry Handel Richardson’s now classic Australian autobiographical novel, The Getting of Wisdom (1910), the novelist looks back at […]
Becoming a botanist – reflections by Carrick Chambers
Stuart Read reviews Becoming a botanist, by Carrick Chambers, with Claudia Chambers, hardback, limited edition, 2022 Available from the Friends of Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, RRP $50 + postage, proceeds go to Wollemi pine research. Email, using subject: ‘botanist book […]
Personal stories of plants
Poppy Fitzpatrick reviews The Plant Thieves: Secrets of the Herbarium (NewSouth, 2023) by Prudence Gibson. This book takes us on a journey of unexpected discovery. What begins as a seemingly simple interrogation of the collecting and cataloguing of plants within […]
Catching the light
Trevor Nottle reviews John Glover, Patterdale Farm and the Revelation of the Australia Landscape by Ron Radford, Ovata Press, Launceston, 2023 John Glover’s painting A View of the artist’s house and garden at Mills Plains, van Dieman’s Land, 1835 brings to […]
Keep a diary, dear horticulturists
Karen Pyke reviews The Hidden Horticulturists: The untold story of the men who shaped Britain’s gardens by Fiona Davison, Atlantic Books, 2019 (paperback 2022) When Fiona Davison began work at the Lindley library, the main library of the Royal […]
Backyard Mangoes
In something a little different for the book blog, below is an article on mangoes, reproduced with the kind permission of the Queenslander House | House Histories | Queensland, a website about Queensland’s vernacular architecture and suburban history. It’s high […]
A mid-century garden on the Nepean River
‘Colour, light, space and texture were essential to Margo Lewers’ art and design philosophy’. Tempe Beaven reviews Margo Lewers No Limits, Grasstree Press, Mosman NSW, 2022 contributors: Tanya Crothers, Glenn Harper, Darani Lewers, Virginia Mitchell, Gina Plate and Catriona Quinn. […]
Fifty years of the UK’s Garden History free online
The UK Garden Trust’s journal Garden History was first published by the Garden History Society in 1972. It quickly became a highly respected source of original research for the emerging discipline of garden history. Now the Gardens Trust have published a […]
Kew’s gardener on HMS Investigator
Peter Good was one of a remarkable team assembled by Joseph Banks for the voyage of the HMS Investigator, captained by Matthew Flinders, to survey the coast of New Holland in 1801–03. Though a man of humble origin, Good […]
A Faustian bargain
Max Bourke, AM reviews The Sacrificial Valley – Coal’s Legacy to the Hunter, by John Drinan, Bad Apple Press (2022); available from sacrificialvalley@gmail.com The author of this book is first and foremost a ‘Hunterian’, his family having lived in the […]
Memoir, plant compendium, poetry collection and more: the ramblings of a generous plant hunter
RAMBLINGS OF A RARE PLANT HUNTER by Marcus Harvey Reviewed by Trevor Pitkin I often wonder when I come across the phrase ‘rare plant hunter’ whether the adjective ‘rare’ applies to the hunter or to the plants they seek. It […]
Rosemary’s Gardening Life
Rosemary Simpson, a member of AGHS since the beginning, has written the story of her gardening life. Rosemary Simpson (née Turnbull) was born in Melbourne in 1929 to Ernest and Joyce Turnbull. In 1936 the family moved to Sydney, and […]
New Zealand’s botanical heroes revealed in a history of Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush
Clare Gleeson reviews AGHS member, Bee Dawson’s beautiful history, Ōtari Two hundred years of Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush, The Cuba Press, 2022. As a Wellingtonian who lives near Ōtari and walks there regularly, I am delighted a history of this very special New […]
The real Miss Willmott
Miss Willmott’s Ghosts by Sandra Lawrence, Blink Publishing, 2022 Reviewed by Clare Gleeson Who could not be fascinated by the story of Ellen Willmott? An eccentric gardener, with what were seemingly endless resources, she made not one but three magnificent gardens […]
Goronga, a hill station garden
Goronga is a farming property in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges, 55 kilometres from Melbourne on the territory of the Kulin nation, its traditional owners being the Boon Wurrung people. In their language, Goronga translates as ‘the big camping […]
Across Bass Strait. Inter-Colonial Trade in Meat and Livestock by Jane Lennon, Anchor Books Australia, 2022
Review by Rosie Mackinnon, co-chair, Tasmanian branch of AGHS This is an historical account of how the agricultural and maritime economies were shaped in Gippsland, Victoria and southeast Tasmania in the 1800s. Risks were immense – storms, droughts, negotiating shipping […]
The Mick Jagger of the plant world
Tim Entwisle, Evergreen. The Botanical Life of a Plant Punk, Thames and Hudson, 2022, review by Max Bourke, AM Full disclosure: Tim Entwisle is a person I admire, a phycologist [from the Greek phŷkos, meaning seaweed] on the road to […]
Is the pen mightier than the trowel?
No! Neither the pen nor the trowel is mightier; instead, both are needed for understanding gardening and recording garden history. So concluded those who attended the AGHS’s winter webinar on 10 July, having listened to Clive Blazey, Julian Raxworthy and […]
Scientific gentlemen of the Baudin expedition
Eds Jean Fornasiero, John West-Sooby, ‘Roaming Freely Throughout the Universe’, Nicolas Baudin’s voyage to Australia and the pursuit of science, Wakefield Press Reviewed by Dot Evans This volume of 15 essays aims to explore the ways in which Francois Péron […]
Exploring the tree continent
Book review by Max Bourke AM I seem to be making a habit of this. Last year I got very excited about the wonderful book by Suzanne Simard Finding the Mother Tree and said so in a review for AGHS […]
100 years of Australian native plants: the Maranoa Botanic Gardens Florilegium by Margaret Castle
The Maranoa Botanic Garden is a hidden gem in Balwyn not far from Melbourne’s city centre. Recently it become entitled to use the word ‘botanic’ in its title, in recognition of its importance in conserving plant specimens in a living […]
Harry Turbott: New Zealand’s First Landscape Architect
Garth Falconer, Harry Turbott: New Zealand’s First Landscape Architect, Blue Acres Publishing, 2020, ISBN 9780473 517496, 223 pages This is a ground-breaking book about New Zealand’s first qualified, teaching landscape architect, the first to establish a multiple-person landscape architecture office and […]