The City Gardener Book

Would-be celebrity gardeners are popping up all over the place now that gardening is the new whatever-the-last-thing-was. You can spot them by the look-at-me TV series and the accompanying book. Among the latest hopefuls in search of an unoccupied niche is The City Gardener, Matt James, whose outstanding characteristic as a gardener is that he lacks a garden. Disarmingly, he confesses at the outset that his personal garden real estate is limited to a small balcony. But of course this is the whole point. City gardening has always been about making do with what little you've got, about ameliorating minimal and unsympathetic spaces and sour, bricky soil (if you're lucky). Matt James goes about his business with the enthusiasm of the first-time author. A Preamble Round the Garden lays out the basic premises--gardening must really be about pleasure or it's not about anything; and throw away the rule book--and he's off. The body of the book is crammed (literally--the designer has opted for a crowded layout and an annoyingly hard to read typeface) with advice on adapting awkward spaces, choosing and placing plants, hiding unwanted features, and so on. It concludes with profiles of a selection of plants chosen for their suitability in the town garden. The many photographs feature the photogenic James quite intensively, sometimes gardening (obviously in somebody else's garden), sometimes sitting around looking shyly at the camera. There's probably nothing here that you won't find in other gardening books, but urban gardeners will relish a book that addresses with energy and conviction precisely the challenges they face. --Robin DavidsonRead More