The book pile

Just one of the gardening bookshelves

My gardening books are a bit like my houseplants - scattered all over the house! When I go into a bookshop, be it new or secondhand, I always head first for the gardening section and I have been doing this for many years. So I think if I were to go around the house gathering all these books into one place, I would end up with a very big pile. But I am thinking this could be a Summer job and it would be quite fun to ‘file them’, into their different ‘sections’: essays on gardening, biographies about gardeners, books on soil, books on specific plants, books on houseplants etc

Then there is the book pile by the bed. Anyone else have this? These are the ones that have made it off the shelf and got as far as the bedside table. Then another book came along and suddenly that too was a pile! Of course in one sense all these books are there as reference but as I have found reading The 1000 Year Old Garden (last weeks blog about Tulip trees) the wonderful thing about gardening books is they build your awareness, join up the horticultural dots and deepen your knowledge in a way that ‘googling’ a specific question doesn’t. I asked a friend, who is passionate about pollinators and interested in insects, how she had built up her knowledge and she said books. She shares her knowledge freely. Earlier this week, four gardeners downloaded the FIT Count app -do take a look at it, it’s not about fitness. Having ensured that we all knew the difference between honeybees and bumblebees, we took up our positions in front of four different species of hydrangea in the Inner Temple gardens and for 10 minutes counted all the insects on the flowers. Spending 10 mins just observing was fascinating, there is so much to learn. As she put it, when we were growing up there was more of a ‘see an insect - squish it attitude’ and there were few long term studies being done. Now we know differently. A survey in 2022 estimated that the UK’s flying insects have declined by 60% in 20 years. She has promised a book list to help us learn more.

So back to the book pile - I am thinking that once I have piled up all my books - I am going to try to make a conscious effort to make time to read and enjoy some of the gems that I have been given or have bought. An Autumn reading list might be in order! I am starting with a book called ‘This Book Is A Plant’. It’s described as a radical anthology of writing about the natural world, featuring climate activists, plant scientists, philosophers and Indigenous thinkers. I bought it at a fascinating exhibition called Rooted Beings at the Welcome Institute in London last Summer.

The gardening magazines piled under the desk in my office are a whole other issue!