English Cottage Gardens;

Dust jacket notes: "English Cottage Gardens is an excursion through the glories of English summer gardens, from small cottage plots where old-fashioned flowers live in clever harmony with vegetables and fruit, to the more spacious gardens of manor house and rectory, where collecctions of choice plants are carefully sited to create a personal vision of Eden. There are few things of more interest to a gardener than another's garden, and it is through the interchange of ideas, old and new, that gardeners learn from each other, drawing inspiration from the gardens they visit. Once inside the gate, we can compare plants and plantings, uncover the history of the garden, and examine the qualities that have given the place its special character. Author and photographer follow the season through English cottage gardens from Cornwall to Norfolk, beginning in the Cotswolds during early summer, as the faded blossoms of spring-flowering bulbs are replaced by the cheerful viola and by the blowsy beauty of the peony. These gardens are a striking contrast to the Mediterranean exuberance of warm Cornish gardens already ablaze with color. Midsummer finds the gardens of Norfolk swooning under their headily scented mantle of old shrub roses, engulfed in stands of azure delphiniums; Dorset and Somerset gardens drowse amid the buzz of bees working sweetly scented herbs against a background of golden thatch. The season progresses along the floral borders of Suffolk, which provide a feast of flower color and perfume, and draws to its close as Kent and Sussex pull on their cloak of soft autumn shades. The book is arranged in three chapters, dividing up the weeks of summer and describing the gardens visited, county by county...."