Spring promise

Anyone who wants answers as to how to grow bulbs successfully and satisfactorily in the garden — and not only the show-stoppers like tulips, daffodils and lilies, but also intriguing or enchanting minor genera, such as Tritelia, Arisaema, Bellevalia and Bulbocodium — can do much worse than to buy a copy of Bulb. This is Anna Pavord’s new book on, well, bulbs, published by Mitchell Beazley (£30). Although the lack of the definite article in the title is strangely irritating (surely the result of a misguided ‘great idea’ from Geoff in Marketing?), this is a handsomely produced book, with cloth-bound spine, heavy board covers, high-quality paper, ribbon page-marker, and text typeset in Fairfield — all of which proclaim it as a book of substance, and one destined for a long life on public and private library shelves. This impression is underlined by the luminous clarity of the photographic images, to be found on every page. They are almost all the work of Andrew Lawson, with the assistance of the delightfully named Torie Chugg.

I must declare a connection here: both writer and principal photographer are good friends of mine so, if you think my view is inevitably compromised by friendship, you need take no notice of what I say. But I should be surprised if the most disengaged observer were not impressed by the high quality of this collaborative effort between author, photographers and publisher.

Anna Pavord’s strengths as a writer on garden bulbs lie partly in a most readable and individual writing style, and partly in her experience of both growing many kinds of bulb and seeing a fair few of them in the wild. And she has the humility to seek answers of experts when her own experience doesn’t provide them. The text which complements the beautiful, yet compellingly truthful, photographs is a rich mix of close-observation notes, historical background and practical advice on how to make bulbs flourish in your garden and why they sometimes don’t. Her best advice is the simplest: that no garden can have too many bulbs. Quite so.

Back to the Garden, Ursula Buchan’s third anthology of garden writing, which contains many articles first seen in The Spectator, is published by Frances Lincoln, price £16.99.