Your Favourite "old" gardening books.

 

I have a number of old favourites which I browse through now and again,
here's a list of a few of mine

Creating your Garden, Ian G Walls. my first gardening book, purchased in
1969.

The readers digest Complete Library of the Garden,  1st Edition.

The four books by  Michael Howarth-Booth.

Some of Beverly Nichols' books, Garden Open Tomorrow is favourite.

Terrace and Courtyard Gardens by  A D B Wood.

These are a few of the ones I keep returning to for inspiration and
ideas but I found it difficult to choose from the many.

Does anybody else have a list of old favourites which you would like to
share your knowledge of.

Don

 

On Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:49:00 +0000, Donwill



The Small Garden, C.E. Lucas Phillips, Pan 1969

Covers everything for the beginner in simple terms, fundamentals,
flowers, vegetables, although many of the insecticides he mentions are
no longer available.

--
 
Chris

Gardening in West Cornwall overlooking the sea.
Mild, but very exposed to salt gales

E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net

 



I use these three more than any of my other gardening/horticulture books:

1.  "Practical Gardening and Food Production in Pictures" by Richard Sudell,
Odhams Press, London, 384 pp.  No date, but probably early 40's since there
is a chapter on how to adapt your garden in wartime.  Covers everything from
garden construction through propagation, pests, flowers, the kitchen garden,
growing fruit, allotments, keeping rabbits and poultry, and more.  Full of
interesting B&W photographs and diagrams of how-to.  A very practical and
down-to-earth book.

2.  "The Illustrated Dictionary of Gardening: An Encyclopedia of
Horticulture" for Gardeners and Botanists.  Ed. George Nicholson, L.Upcott
Gill (ca. 1888), 12 volumes. Lavishly illustrated with B&W line drawings and
some colour plates. How to grow anything from anywhere, good on worldwide
and tropical species as well as temperate. Definitely what to use when
there's no Internet available.

3.  "Sanders' Encyclopaedia of Gardening" rev. A.J. MacSelf, Collingridge,
London, 477 pp.  Many reprints from 1895 onwards (mine is 1945).  How to
grow anything, useful as a botanical or horticultural reference for a
temperate climate.

someone

 

someone wrote:

Yes,!!!!!!!! "The illustrated Dictionary of Gardening", I have the 4
Volume set, Dated 1888, a wonderful set of reference books, and as you
say, beautifully illustrated and a mine of information. I dig them out
when everything else has failed. My son gave them to me on my 60th
birthday, he lived in Hay and procured them for me.
Don

 



Snap! Mine were a 50th birthday present and my partner had to get them the
90 miles from a bookshop near Kew to where we live in N. Wilts - by bus.
The lot weights 18 lbs!

someone