The Botanical Garden 2004 [Calendar]

Roger Phillips (Photographer), Martyn Rix (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2003 | ISBN-10: 1552971333 | ISBN-13: 978-1552971338 | Edition: Wal

Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix, pioneers in plant photography, have set a new standard for illustrated gardening books with publication of The Botanical Garden Volume I and Volume II. They've spent a lifetime collecting, studying and photographing more than 2,000 genera of temperate plants. The result is a unique collection of images and information which presents even common plants in a wholly unexpected way. Adapted from the books, the exquisite detail in The Botanical Garden 2004 is sure to delight gardeners and plant lovers everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Photographer Phillips and botanist, plant collector, and gardener Rix have already collaborated on 23 horticultural books. Their latest project covers more than 1000 genera of plants in the world's temperate regions. Each volume is arranged in evolutionary order by family, from the most primitive to the most advanced. Each genus entry includes a detailed botanical description of the genus, key recognition features, evolution and plant relationships, ecology and geography, and facts about the genus ranging from garden uses to medicinal uses. Most compelling are the spectacular, close-up color photographs that exquisitely detail every plant part. Unfortuntately, the lack of detailed cultural information, USDA hardiness zones, and specific species information makes this work less useful for gardeners than other horticultural works. The price tag will keep this set out of some public libraries, which would be better served by Steven M. Still's Manual of Herbaceous Ornamental Plants and Michael A. Dirr's Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. For a work with extensive color photographs, public libraries should instead consider Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs. This set is recommended for botanic and academic libraries.
Sue O'Brien, Downers Grove P.L., IL
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

The strict botanical viewpoint of Phillips and Rix offers scholarly gardeners an alternative to popular horticulture guides. In two classy volumes illustrated with detailed photos of leaves and bracts, blossoms, rhizomes, and root structures, the text expresses the value of plants to ecology, farming, and the individual orchard, landscape, flower bed, and window box. Arranged into groups in evolutionary order, the plants appear on individual pages or multipage spreads alongside scientific name, concise description, locale, and designation of hybrids and cultivation methods. The commentary is reduced to the blunt shorthand of the scientist, but the 4,000 pictures are pure art. Rounding out each volume are a succinct two-page glossary of such terms as loess, raceme, and umbel and a brief bibliography organized by continent.

Examples of elegantly arranged illustrations are found under Albizia, Mahonia, and Yucca in volume 1 and under Acanthus, Dryopteris, and Molucella in volume 2. The accompanying plant data are, as the authors state, definitive and full of exacting details (e.g., the names and dates of botanists who located and classified individual flowers, ferns, herbs, bamboos, and evergreens). What is lacking in each entry and particularly in the index is the human touch. The authors ignore common names for many plants (the only way to find lilac is to know that its scientific name is Syringa) and avoid reference to plant uses in cooking, aromatherapy, and healing, thus confining the value of the set to college and university libraries. Whereas the botanist and grower will be overjoyed to find so brilliant a display of entries and plant photos, the high-school student, librarian, greenhouse manager, and ordinary gardener is more likely to experience frustration. Recommended for large botany collections. RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Calendar: 24 pages
• Publisher: Firefly Books; Wal edition (May 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1552971333
• ISBN-13: 978-1552971338
• Product Dimensions: 14 x 11.6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,941,171 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well above average, February 6, 2003

By 

P. van Rijckevorsel (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Botanical Garden (Hardcover)

This is a pretty nice book. Of course it is always a relief to find a work without the ubiquitous hardiness maps and gardening advice. This handsomely printed volume in full color is a pleasure to browse through. Finally an arrangement of trees and shrubs that makes some sense, instead of the haphazard (read alphabetical) arrangement encountered so often. Although the authors wisely avoid the trap of involving themselves in the morass of common names they definitely miss a trick by not giving the etymology of the botanical names. It is quite odd to see a laurel-like picture of Daphniphyllum and not be able to read that "daphne" is the Greek word for "laurel" with "phyllus" the Greek for "leaf"

Of course trees and shrubs is too big a topic to fit within the covers of a single volume and it is not surprising to notice that the authors occasionally drop the ball and make quite silly errors. Obviously it would be too much to expect anybody to be fully informed on the whole range of plants covered.

Perhaps the most noticeable thing missing from this work is light. Quite a lot of the trees and shrubs included here have dark green foliage and in the pictures not much detail can be made out. A bit more light in photography would have made quite a difference.

All in all this is a book that will look good on the bookshelf and will be appreciated by anybody who is fond of trees and shrubs and is not afraid to look beyond the confines of the own garden.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strikingly beautiful, authoritative, and thorough, October 31, 2007

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Botanical Garden (Vol 1) (Hardcover)

This is a two-volume set. Although Amazon does not make this obvious, you can see in the color photos of the covers (above) that there is a "Volume I, Trees and Shrubs" and a "Volume II: Perennials and Annuals." Volume I weighs about five pounds; Volume II, a little more. I mention the weigh to impress upon the reader the impact that these books will have on your library. These are weighty volumes in more ways than one.

They are lavishly illustrated with several full-colors photos artfully arranged on each heavy, glossy page (over a thousand altogether in the two volumes) showing the flowers, leaves, fruit, seeds, catkins, etc. of the plants. The photos are identified by date of the year taken: the leaves 1/3 life size of Lindera megaphylla, for example, on May 5th, the flowers 2x life size on March 8th, and so on for hundreds of different species. The presentation is not exhaustive of course, but plants from all the major genera are represented, taking into account the "classical arrangement" and the new evidence from DNA in the classifications. Note well the overall title of this two-volume set: "The Botanical Garden." These are books for gardeners who have become amateur botanists, for weekend naturalists who have outgrown their field guides. The plants described and pictured include the giant Sequoias and redwoods as well as the ephemeral weeds of the roadside, not just plants that one might want to grow in a garden or even a city park.

The text is sprightly, terse and scientifically informed. The family of the genera is given and the number of species known and where they grow, e.g., "...in western North America and eastern Asia." The plants are described, e.g., "fast growing...to 30m...," the bark and the leaves are described, how pollination is achieved is explained. (It is interesting to note that sometimes the qualification "presumed by insects" is used, pointing to the incompleteness of our knowledge.) "Key recognition features" are given, as are notes on evolution, ecology and geography. Finally there is a "Comment" which may give the historical, cultural or scientific significance of the plants.

There are two minor weaknesses in the books: (1) the common names of the plants, e.g., "strawberry tree" (Arbutus unedo) are sometimes given and sometimes not. Additionally, when--as is often the case--there are several common names, only one or two are given; (2) there are no photos of the entire plant showing its crown and shape. Speaking of the strawberry tree, the authors remark that "The name unedo means, 'I eat one,' because the fruit is so insipid that nobody is tempted to eat a second." However I recently collected a few of the exquisitely beautiful fruits of Arbutus unedo and found out that the fruit itself is not insipid; in fact it is rather tasty, like a kind of peach or apricot jam; but unfortunately is covered, as though spray-painted on, with a thick and bitter, very red outer coating--I cannot call it a skin--that is almost impossible to separate from the fruit within. And so only someone very, very hungry would go to the trouble of eating more than one.

The emphasis is on identification and beauty, and on the accuracy of nomenclature. Yes, beauty. Above all else I would say this set celebrates the timeless beauty of the botanical world. Of all the books I have seen on plants this is at once the most beautiful and the most helpful in terms of identification. These are volumes to turn to when you come home with the field guide in your hand.

There is a nearly identical glossary in both volumes, a short bibliography and individual indices. It is important to note that this is not a reprint of some venerable opus, but a completely new compilation copyright 2002. As such it is authoritative in a way that some older books may not be.