The cottage garden

It's not often I review older books but once in a while the quality is such that I break my own rule. (I'm not sure whether that makes me flexible, whimsical or inconsistent. Whatever.) Anne Scott-James writes such lovely smooth prose. It's not at all pretentious; it's easy to read and her words envelop her topic like a comfortable blanket.She is knowledgeable. She has a lifetime of cottage gardening to draw on and understands the topic right through to her bones. She has also done a generous amount of research into the history of the cottage garden and these together give the book a depth that is seldom found.So this book, that so easily could be cloyingly sentimental, is actually a historical record of the development of the cottage garden in England. Starting with medieval times the writer shows how a "garden" of a few herbs used for medicinal purposes, together with a few fruit trees grew to become, by Victorian times, a corner of the most idyllic land in all the world. The Victorian cottage garden was unabashedly sentimentalized by poets and artists who would have you believe that the flowers were always blooming and the family was always content. This disguises the truth that a labourers plot of land had to supply vegetables and fruit enough to feed his family, with perhaps a few left over for sale, as well as producing flowers. But the flowers could help the family budget too. As one old man put it "We sold so many bunches of snowdrops in spring that they paid the rates". ("Rates" are local taxes.)I found this a delightful read and it added a lot to my knowledge of cottage gardening. This book will be appreciated by anyone who is interested in the English cottage style of gardening or in the history of gardens in England.