Keyword: Reviews

Excellent photographs are the outstanding quality of “Uncommon Beauty”, a new field guide focused on an underexplored part of the Pacific Northwest — southeastern British Columbia. Written by an enthusiastic outdoorsman and native of the area, Neil L. Jennings provides a very readable description of over 200 plants, many who have ranges that extend southward into eastern Washington.

Excerpted from the Fall 2008 Arboretum Bulletin.

Based on his earlier, high-energy books, it is not hard to imagine Des Kennedy as the author of book entitled “The Passionate Gardener”. With wicked humor and incredible insight to both gardens and gardeners, he warns of the seven deadly sins of gardening, and extols its ten commandments. Other chapters are more reflective, but he’s always ready to see the irony and contradictions in how we conduct our favorite pursuit.

Kennedy also displays a knack for travel writing, making trips to Hawaii, Ireland, and New Zealand entertaining while packing in a lot of names and facts that would be handy for planning your own trip. This is the perfect reading companion for a winter’s evening and between the laughs, you just might soak up some good, sound gardening counsel based the author’s years of gardening in the British Columbia Gulf Islands.

Excerpted from the Fall 2008 Arboretum Bulletin.

Why do forests capture our imagination? And why are so many fairytales, at least in the Northern European tradition, rooted in forests? Sara Maitland’s Gossip from the Forest is a fascinating and freewheeling exploration of how people shape the natural world, which shapes the tales we tell, which in turn shape us.

Maitland opens with the original meaning of the word ‘gossip’ (“one who has contracted a spiritual relationship to another, or a familiar acquaintance or friend”). As a feminist writer, she is reclaiming a term she believes has been trivialized to dismiss the power of women’s communication. (The American edition of the book has truncated the title to From the Forest, which is a shame.)

The chapters run from March through February, and in each Maitland visits a different forest in England or Scotland, and ends with a unique retelling of a familiar fairytale. There is much to ponder and to absorb. The descriptions of coppicing and pollarding were surprising to me, and I had to overcome my reflexive distaste for human interventions in the growth of forest trees. In a deciduous forest setting, these practices can be beneficial not only to humans (who need wood for fuel, building, and other uses) but to the trees as well. She notes that coppicing extends the lifespan of oaks, for example. Pollarding, which is done higher up on the tree, makes the thin branches accessible to humans but not to browsing deer and other mammals.

Another observation that intrigued me was the venerated position beech trees hold in British culture (see Richard Mabey’s book Beechcombings, or the widespread use of beeches in private estates to “posh up the landscape,” to quote the book) compared to the birch, which the author prefers for its aesthetic and useful qualities. Beech is thought of as native, but is widespread across Europe; in Britain it mainly grows in the southern half of the country. She recalls her father’s saying that “tyranny is like a beech tree; it looks very fine but nothing grows under it.”

This is a book with a wide reach. Maitland touches on the history of the powerful and the powerless as evidenced in policies like enclosure (ending public rights and access to land which was once held in common), and on the cultural and psychological underpinnings of tales in which common folk are skilled and wise while kings are fools and landed gentry are consumed by greed. Her walks through the forest evoke the mystery of the natural world and the stories we tell to understand our place in it. Adam Lee, Maitland’s son (who took the photographs which accompany the text), provides a useful image which summarizes the essence of the book: fairytales, forests, and people are interdependent, like mycorrhizae and tree roots.

Two Seattle area garden designers discovered they have a shared passion for leaves. The result of this synergy is “Fine Foliage,” a rare garden design book in which almost no flowers are allowed. Karen Chapman and Christina Salwitz fill their book with a gallery of plant combinations highlighting leaf color, patterns, size, and shapes in both intimate and large-scale settings.

For each example there is a memorable name (like “Down the Rabbit Hole” or “Deer Be Damned!”), a summary of combined cultural needs, and a “Meet the Players” highlight of the selected plants. Most useful is the “Why This Works” paragraph that highlights the design principles behind each combination and stressing the importance of foliage first in any planting plan. Readers of “The Bulletin” will be interested to see that three of the designs for shady locations were created by Rizaniño “Riz” Reyes, a gardener on the University of Washington Botanic Gardens staff.

Excerpted from the Summer 2013 Arboretum Bulletin.