SOMEWHERE, OVER THE RAINBOW

By LADYBUG

The book opens on a spread of a yew topiary shaped into waves. Yes, waves. With a sculpture of birds in flight above.

Elsewhere, a male silver pheasant is completely at home in front of a magnolia.

While our gardens rest during winter, gardeners escape into warmer, brighter climes. Those of us who can’t transport ourselves physically to lush landscapes, do so vicariously. And there’s no better companion than a book filled with the most gorgeous imagery and ideas and tips. And more imagery.

The Naturally Beautiful Garden celebrates contemporary garden designs and some of the ways such gardens assist the natural world. Many of these have been created within the last ten years, and other pioneering gardens are older. They all present a store of unique and wonderful ideas across a range of styles and circumstances.

Depending upon their location, all gardens face different challenges, writes Kathryn Bradley-Hole in her introduction,

Not just location, but size, I can’t stop myself from commenting, when I see the foaming clouds of blossoms in a border of Gaura lindheimeri. I celebrate the single Gaura in my modest suburban plot.

A stunning melange of pinks and purples from Jim Blake’s garden in Ireland is accompanied by tips from the gardener whom she describes as a plantsman of exceptional range and knowledge.

• “I am well aware that my obsession with plants could lead to a muddled appearance. So I am happy to get rid of things I have previously planted – even trees. I don’t want to end up with a big dark garden.”

• “One of the best things you can do for your garden is to get out of it, as often as possible, to see and learn from other places.”

• “It’s a fusion of relationships here, between the land, the natural life it supports, and me. I am not the most important thing in this garden, but part of a bigger process.”

Bradley-Hole writes about Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the section on supporting wildlife. “When Rachel Carson, a marine biologist, published Silent Spring in 1962, the world received a wake-up call to the devastating environmental consequences of synthetic pesticides, then routinely used in gardens as well as on farms.”

As a firm believer in the organic approach to gardening – bring on the baking soda and vinegar! – I have to admit to some hesitancy when I read the caption next to a lovely image of a pile of logs nestled in a bed of wildflowers.

“Log piles can make good homes for small rodents and reptiles as well as a variety of insect life.”

How do I reconcile that with the Elmer Fudd in me that surfaces at the mere sighting of squirrels and hares that scamper through my garden?

A chemical-free natural swimming pool? I can see that in my garden – if I had a garden that was many, many times larger than my current one is.

And then there’s the evocatively named Bhudevi garden in New Zealand.

The property was named Bhudevi – Sanskrit for Mother Earth – by its owners, husband and wife team Bruce Miller and Jane Casey, experts in Asian art who have spent much of their time in Bangkok.”

The thoughtfully provided section on further reading leads me down more garden paths.