This new generation of compact, attractive handbooks solves garden problems and showcases important plant groups. Endorsed by the American Horticultural Society, every handbook includes clear instruction and full-color photographs to help inspire confidence and ensure success.
Linden Hawthorne's latest book, Gardenening with Shape, Line and Texture, was shortlisted by The Garden Media Guild for Reference Book of the Year in December 2010. I returned to the more bucolic life as the working head gardener of an estate on a spur of the Wolds in North Yorkshire, UK, some ten years ago, working hand-in-glove with the owner - also a passionate gardener. I manage orchards, a large kitchen garden, bog gardens, meadows and woodland gardens, as well as a private arboretum (tree collection) of some 2,500 specimens. I formerly enjoyed a long career in horticultural publishing, working on a wide variety of reference publications over twenty years. Some of the high spots included being the contributing editor for cultivation on The New RHS Dictionary of Gardening, (Macmillan 1992), and for the RHS A-Z Encyclopedia Of Garden Plants (Dorling Kindersley 1995). For five years, I enjoyed being a monthly contributor to the Royal Horticultural Society Journal, The Garden, as the author of Last Words. For a time, I acted as the Education Officer for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew & Castle Howard Arboretum Trust (CHAT) from 1997 to 2002, and as sole guide-lecturer for the previous nine years for Dr James Russell's outstanding plant collections at Castle Howard in Yorkshire, where I made friends with visiting fellow gardeners from all over the world.(If you haven't seen the collections at Castle Howard, you will be astounded when you do). Although I am indisputably an English gardener, I have also travelled widely in the US, most recently to see the Big Trees in California.
Gardens and most particularly plants; designing with them, painting them, growing them, eating them,seeing them in their habitat and making the connection between their needs in the wild and how to imitate that in gardens are perennial sources of joy for me. Sharing those experiences with other gardeners is too. My new book was written with them in mind. The only thing I hate about gardening? Probably one-upmanship. Your garden, your space, your taste, are your own joys. Let them be your own expression of beauty and they're a joy forever.
