Review Ideas, Tips & Guides

Every month this year I’ve been trying to read one of the unread books on my shelf, and to then decide whether it gets to keep its spot or needs to be set free to find a new home. For June I chose Nature’s Wild Harvest by Eric Soothill and Michael J. Thomas. It was published in 1983, and has been sitting on my bookshelf for three years, since I bought it in our local secondhand bookshop (which only opens on Wednesdays).

A lot of new gardening and plant books have landed on my mat this spring, and I need to up my book reviewing game! I like to do them justice, and spend some time reading them before I write a review, so that does create a bit of a backlog. Right at the time when the garden is demanding my attention. Anyway, the book that has found itself at the top of the list is one that really encompasses the gardening zeitgeist – The Community Gardening Handbook, by Ben Raskin. I looked him up, and he has impeccable credentials. He’s currently Head of Horticulture for the Soil Association; prior experiences include working for Garden Organic, running a walled garden and being a Horticultural Advisor for the Community Farm near Bristol.

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Ever since we watched Away, Ryan and I have a new toast: “To Mars”. Unlike that fictional crew, we have no hope of ever reaching the red planet. But there are an increasing number of days when I think it would be nice to leave humanity’s mess behind and start afresh on a new world. But the prospect of forming a colony elsewhere in the solar system is a long way off, and when people talk about life on Mars they’re usually referring to alien life. 

If there is one thing I am truly grateful for during this extraordinary time, it’s my garden. Not only is it producing harvests for us and reducing our reliance on our over-stressed food system, but it’s somewhere we can step outside and be surrounded by nature, without having to worry about social distancing. 

I’m not well adapted to hot weather. I’ve been soldiering on, trying to get on with things as the temperature soars, but on Friday I gave up and decided to aestivate (the summer version of hibernation) on the sofa. Mostly I watched endless episodes of Bones, but I also flipped through a new recipe book I’d been given to review, Fress, bold flavour from a Jewish kitchen. According to the front cover, Fress means “to eat copiously and without restraint.”

Over the summer I was reading Botanical Brain Balms, a book by Nicolette Perry and Elaine Perry on ‘medicinal plants for memory, mood and mind’. It brings together a wealth of information on plants that can help us sleep or stay calm, ease our pain, improve our memory, and even provide us with mind-altering experiences. Some of the plants are exotic, in that they won’t grow in the UK climate, but which you can find on the shelves of the health food shop, but many are familiar garden plants. Each entry contains a description of the plant and its habitat, a round-up of history and folklore, and the results of modern scientific research proving its effectiveness. You will also find the key ingredients (chemicals) that provide the effect, how to use the plant and any relevant safety notes. There are even some recipes, including a sage, pine and mint cleaning spray to improve memory and concentration, a happy face cream, and teas, biscuits and cocktails.

In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Kate Greene talks about Shannon Lucid, the NASA astronaut who spent six months living on the Russian space station Mir. Shannon, it turns out, was a bookworm. During her stay, she read 50 books and improvised shelving from old food boxes, complete with straps to stop the books floating off. This was in 1996, a good decade before the invention of the Kindle, and so these were real books. She apparently chose titles with the highest word to mass ratio, since launch weight is a critical factor! Lucid left her library behind for future spacefarers, but it burned up when Mir was de-orbited in 2001.

I’m gradually building a library of books about space, so when Tim Peake’s autobiography Limitless was published last year, I asked mum and dad to get it for me for Christmas. They duly did (thank you!), but when Covid cancelled Christmas, it meant I didn’t get my book for a couple of months. These things happen. 

One of my great joys this summer was discovering the Lady Astronaut series of novels, written by Mary Robinette Kowal.

When someone says orchid, what springs to mind? Probably the beautiful and showy hybrid orchids you can buy in the garden centre, or possibly the tropical orchids Kew does such magnificent displays with during its annual orchid festival. The cultivation of tropical orchids became popular in Britain in the seventeenth century. At the time, no one knew how to propagate orchids from seed, and wild plants were dug up and imported en masse, devastating their native habitats. By the nineteenth century, people had realised that the common British wildflowers they had been overlooking were also orchids. They too became popular with collectors, with some species being driven to the brink of extinction by over-collection and the intensification of agriculture.

With the current popularity of “witch lit“, I thought I would revisit some of the magical novels on my bookshelf.

Baobab is a remarkable tree with striking appearance identified by it’s swollen trunk which stores water. Slow growing the tree is believed to live for centuries but has no aging rings in the trunk.

Conker collecting has encouraged many a stick to be thrown into a Horse Chestnut tree. The candle or flower heads are even more spectacular than the crop of conkers that they give birth too.

Cedar of Lebanon

Some trees are named to confuse. The Indian Bean Tree is not from India and it doesn’t grow beans. As a native of north America it is named for a North American native Indian tribe. The seeds are produced in long bean like pods.

Ornamental Japanese Maples are widely available for planting in your garden. The autumn colouring makes these trees spectacular when planted en mass in a woodland or Japanese garden setting.

The British have a fascination with trees be they humble or ‘Remarkable’,’Ancient’ or saplings, ‘Great’ or just plain good.

An unusual tree with even more unusual fruit.

The Papaya is a widely grown fruit tree of the tropics. It’s large fleshy fruit contains many seeds but can weigh from 1 pound up to 20 pound on some varieties.

A water loving tree that is comparatively short lived at about 150 years. It is fast growing and can often be found near river banks.

Ficus macrophylla, commonly known as the Moreton Bay Fig, is a large evergreen banyan tree of the Moraceae family. It shares the characteristics of most Fig trees.

‘The older an olive tree is, the broader and more gnarled its trunk appears. Many olive trees in the groves around the Mediterranean are said to be hundreds of years old, while an age of 2,000 years is claimed for a number of individual trees’

Common Ash trees row widely in the UK and other Ashes grow in Asia and America. Our Ash has dark almost black buds and some species have interesting flowers but it is as a tree the provided wood to make bows that the Ash is best known in Britain.

From the National Christmas Tree Federation ‘For Christmas trees, overall color of Norway spruce is fair to excellent, but needle retention is considered poor unless the trees are cut fresh and kept properly watered. Growth during the first 10 years after field planting is relatively slow and 8 to 11 years are required to grow a 6-7 foot tree.’Above in the public domain because its copyright has expired

The Quinine tree or large shrub has provided medical cures for malaria and fever for 400 years. The ground up bark is the key substance for this and as the additive in tonic water.

Unassuming in appearance the evergreen Ylang Ylang tree is highly valued for the essential oil it can produce.

The name Hornbeam derives from ‘hard tree’ a reference to the property of the extremely tough wood.

The Hawthorn flowers in May hence one of its common names. Gnarled old trunks give testimony to the Hawthorn’s ability to survive in exposed windy conditions. The thorns help make the tree a good hedging subject.

Larch trees are common in forestry plantations and high ground in the UK. Larch are fast growing and loose there leaves in winter. The wood from Common Larch trees is still used for a range of purposes.

Fascinating leaves are grown on this unique tree that has been around for over 200 million years. Last one of a kind the Ginkgo has no close relatives. Now famous for its extracts and herbal remedies it is also a revered tree in the Buddhist religion.

waiting for photo – if you have a suitable image let us know

Liriodendron tulipifera or Tulip tree is a tall striking tree related to the magnolia with similar Tulip shaped flowers. It has been planted in Britain since 1688 as an ornamental parks and gardens tree.

Credits Quiver Tree by hibbijibbies CC BY-ND 2.0 “Midas tree by Paul WatsonCC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Oak trees conjure up images of Robin Hood and mystical Oak forests. Britain has made good use of Oak trees down the centuries. ‘From little acorns great Oak trees grow’