Books

It took me ages to take the above photo with my phone - but I won in the end.  I had decided to learn something about the primula/primrose and so went on a book hunt for my four favourite books which tell me the facts and folklore I need to know.

I had lost 'The illustrated Flora' by Marjorie Blamey and Christopher Gray-Wilson a practical recording of all the wild flowers we come across in Britain and looked for it's 'orange cover'.  Well stupid it is a dark green.  Each book is crafted by the person who wrote it, and in the case of the Blamey book  also by the illustrations.  The book below is the Phillips book which has photographs of all the wild flowers.  They have a dead look to them, presumably because it would take hours before he got them home to photo.

The two favourites are of course Grigson's 'Englishman's Flora' a cornucopia of completely useless facts but so much more informative that anything AI can conjuror.  A particular plant can have a dozen nicknames from different parts of the country.  And of course plants were used for medicinal purposes or culinary cooking.

But my most favoured book is the Robinson 'English Flower Garden' late 19th century a great tome of a book with it's information gathered over time.  The illustrations are made on wood and a joy to behold, also may I say as good as any photo.  The provenance of the vast array of plants that we have in our gardens come from overseas, from specific zones where they grow, have you ever seen wild roses in China for instance?  The great plant hunters of the 19th centuries brought these treasures back in glass Wardian cases.  

It was of course the wealthy who planted these new exotics in their vast gardens a bit like Robinson above at Gravetye Manor in Sussex.