The Potting-Shed Papers

Charles Elliott's The Potting-Shed Papers is a collection of essays, many reprinted from Horticulture magazine, that effortlessly blend garden history and contemporary garden trends. Elliott is at his best writing about the golden age of plant exploration, historic gardeners and their writings, and the origins of plants such as tree peonies and flowering cherries. His experiences actually gardening in both the U.S. and Wales provide for interesting insights into differing practices whether it be for laying out vegetable beds or maintaining lawns. His exposure to gardening around the world is shared via delightful commentary on the Ingurishu (English cottage style) gardens of Japan and the inner workings of a top Dutch nursery. To me the most touching essay was "On Keeping Track," a rumination on gardening journals spurred by the discovery of an unknown woman's forty years of garden notes in a small leather-bound book headed for a charity shop. It brings together all of Elliott's interests--plants, gardens, and garden history--and leaves the gardening reader feeling part of an unbroken continuum of gardeners always awaiting the next best bloom. Recommended for anyone with more than a passing interest in historical aspects of gardening.

Those of you who have stacks of seed and plant catalogs at your bedside (some of them wrinkled from having been repeatedly dropped during bathtub reading) - those of you who get giddy from the perfume of the first spring rain hitting the compost pile - those of you who can name more varieties of roses than the names of members of your family, must have this little book. Non-gardeners simply won't understand, and that's OK. We can keep this gem to ourselves!

The short essays in this book are highly entertaining and informative, shedding light on many little-known aspects of gardening history. Elliott writes with humor and wit, and with a self-effacing posture that is disarming.