The Curious Gardeners Book

The Curious Gardeners are Guy Cooper and Gordon Taylor, garden designers and historians who roar about the countryside in a stylish Alvis sports car, pronouncing on the many and various gardens they encounter on their way. Neither is short of personality, to say the least, and their complementary characters form the basis of a fine double-act engendering much superior banter. (Sound familiar?) Yet it would be quite wrong to dismiss the television series, and the present book, as voyeuristic garden-snooping--"Guy and Gordon's Gorgeous Gardens", so to speak. In another life, Cooper and Taylor have a number of serious and innovative books on garden design to their name. There is a serious purpose at work here, considerable erudition, and, leavening though, a sharp wit. Their travels allow them to explore and comment on the astonishing diversity created by the industry of the British gardener across the centuries. Above all, the authors are at pains to show how the best gardens arise directly from an engagement with what Pope called "the genius of the place". Their so-called "Gardens Traditional" is perhaps most clearly illustrated in the exquisite terraced gardens created by Repton at Endsleigh House in Devon, their "Gardens Contemporary" by the magical enclosed water-garden recently installed at Kiftsgate. Not all the sites are on the scale of these two: many of those deemed "Gardens Eccentric" are domestic--maintained by their owners in a spirit of what the authors term "divine amateurism". There is much to admire here. We should be grateful to Cooper and Taylor for bringing their insight and knowledge to bear on these forty-odd gardens, some familiar but many quite unknown, all fascinating in their own way. --Robin DavidsonRead More