Customer Reviews

The Potting-Shed Papers: On Gardens, Gardeners, and Garden History

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The short essays in this book are highly entertaining and informative, shedding light on many little-known aspects of gardening history. Elliott writes with humor and wit, and with a self-effacing posture that is disarming.

Charles Elliott's The Potting-Shed Papers is a collection of essays, many reprinted from Horticulture magazine, that effortlessly blend garden history and contemporary garden trends. Elliott is at his best writing about the golden age of plant exploration, historic gardeners and their writings, and the origins of plants such as tree peonies and flowering cherries. His experiences actually gardening in both the U.S. and Wales provide for interesting insights into differing practices whether it be for laying out vegetable beds or maintaining lawns. His exposure to gardening around the world is shared via delightful commentary on the Ingurishu (English cottage style) gardens of Japan and the inner workings of a top Dutch nursery.

To me the most touching essay was "On Keeping Track," a rumination on gardening journals spurred by the discovery of an unknown woman's forty years of garden notes in a small leather-bound book headed for a charity shop. It brings together all of Elliott's interests--plants, gardens, and garden history--and leaves the gardening reader feeling part of an unbroken continuum of gardeners always awaiting the next best bloom. Recommended for anyone with more than a passing interest in historical aspects of gardening.

Those of you who have stacks of seed and plant catalogs at your bedside (some of them wrinkled from having been repeatedly dropped during bathtub reading) - those of you who get giddy from the perfume of the first spring rain hitting the compost pile - those of you who can name more varieties of roses than the names of members of your family, must have this little book.

Non-gardeners simply won't understand, and that's OK. We can keep this gem to ourselves!

Charles Elliott proves one thing, being an expert in one subject does not necessarily make you an expert in another. Elliott writes well and entertainingly, but his book THE POTTING SHED PAPERS leads me to believe he does not understand gardening or the natural world. To hear Elliott tell it, men invented gardening and have been responsible for gardening and exploring the natural word ever since. Has he never heard of Vita Sackville, Gertrude Jekyll, Katherine White, Elizabeth Lawrence, Eleanor Perenyi, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, Louise Beebe Wilder, Margaret Murie, Katherine Scherman, Betty Flanders Thompson, Mary Austin, Maria Audubon, and many other women gardeners and naturalists? Oh yes, he gives them a nod here and there, but the focus of his essays are men and their experiences.

Speaking of men, I would have found Elliott's book far more interesting if I hadn't read Henry Mitchell, Allen Lacy, Michael Pollan, and Beverly Nichols and noted their apparent willingness to mention "female gareners" they had known and/or admired. Also, other garden writers have done a better job of covering the men Elliot discusses. For example, if you want to know more about Johnny Appleseed and apples, read Michael Pollen's BOTANY OF DESIRE.

Other than his patronizing tone and disregard of female gardeners and naturalists, I suppose the most irritating aspect of this book is Elliott's apparent disregard for nature. In my estimation, he approaches gardening as a battle to be waged, not an activity to be enjoyed. Unlike his Welsh and English neighbors for whom he has thinly disquised scorn (and one assumes this includes Prince Charles owner of a profitable organic gardening operation in Wales), Elliott never met a machine he doesn't like. He doesn't cultivate his plot working in harmony with the rhythms of nature, he crucifies it. He says he owns a very large rototiller which he uses to plow the earth with such enthusiasm he brings down fences. (In some circles, this is known as rape.) Anyone who knows anything about gardening knows overworking the soil destroys humus. Humus is the good stuff you need to retain moisture and nurture plants. Organic gardeners advise planting half digested material from the compost heap directly into the garden. Half digested is the opposite of finely-ground particles produced by machines with gas powered engines.

I use organic gardening techniques and year after year have produced magnificent and productive plants loaded with flowers and fruits and vegetables. I don't own a single gas guzzling tool. I use tools powered by my own arms and legs. I'd be willing to bet my garden and my body are in better shape than Mr. Elliott's.