John Viska & Lisa Williams (eds), Historic Gardens of Perth: European settlement to Modernism, Scott Print, Perth, 2023, reviewed by Pamela Statham Drew. This handsome book of 202 pages is the first to tell the story of Perth’s gardens from […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
‘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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]