Recent gardening books | 2 December 2009

Philippa Lewis is a picture researcher, with an eye for uncommon facts and a wry way of presenting them. Her book Everything You Can Do in the Garden Without Actually Gardening (Frances Lincoln, £16.99), is a scholarly and entertaining social history with pictures. Most books of this type recycle old material, but this writer has a knack of discovering fresh facts. The Wordsworths papered their cottage with newspaper. Eric Ravilious tried to include a man diving into a swimming pool for his Wedgewood Garden service, but was told that the design would not be accessible to the British public. Princess Charlotte thought skittles were low grade at Claremont, so she turned the ninepin alley into flowerbeds. The knowledge is lightly worn and there is masses of information, a bit like Schott’s Miscellany, but better, because you can enjoy it in an old-fashioned way, as a good read, while absorbing facts to amuse your friends.

Another pleasure in this volume of garden tourism through the ages, is being reminded of passages from books read long ago, but now forgotten. Isabel Poppet, in Mapp and Lucia, ‘turned black with all those sun-baths and her hair spiky and wiry with so many sea-baths, resembled a cross between a kipper and a sea urchin.’ Sun-bathing, games, exercises, parties, fires, children, pets and ideas are all things that have occupied people out of doors. So too have love and feasts and picnics. Of course there are omissions. Don’t people ever play chess or cards outside? And not all the games that children enjoy, like French and English, or Go Home, are mentioned. The book makes one think about what else gardens are for and what extra possibilities there might be for outdoor life.