For June's Livres du Mois I have photographed How Does Your Garden Grow? by Beverley Nichols, Compton Mackenzie, Marion Cran and V. Sackville-West, with decorations by Nora S. Unwin. This book was a birthday gift from my mother this month, completing my Beverley Nichols gardening books collection. It is a rare book and is too wonderful not to be shared so I photographed each page (with the help of a pair of Spanish daggers to hold down the pages). The book can be found here in the article and in the Rare Book section of The Library. The synopsis reads:
“Light and entertaining discussions on gardens and gardening with passing reference to cabbages, kings, and other subjects. Flowering shrubs and trees. winter flowers, annuals, herbaceous borders, hedges, designs, etc. are dealt with. All the essays are untied, and knit into a whole, by the common passion of the writers for the beauty of a garden. The writers are not concerned with the growing of rare plants, so much as with the creating of beauty of common everyday things. None of them, however, suggest “silver bells and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row.”
I hope you have enjoyed reading this book, if not there may be something more to your taste in The Library. But if you are not delighted by Beverley Nichols talking about winter flowers and Vita Sackville-West talking about garden design you may need to sort out your priorities. Just a suggestion...an imperative suggestion...
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