Author: David Squire
Publishers: New Holland

The fascination with palms and cycads is a fairly recent phenomenon in this country which may have something to do with our desire to pretend that our climate is more tropical than it is in reality. Palms and cycads are two completely different plant families but gardeners who favour one tend to also like the other (at a pinch one could say that cycads have foliage which resembles palms). There aren’t many good books on palms and cycads around, and even fewer on growing them in New Zealand conditions.

Sadly this book does not fill the gap. While it is subtitled “A complete guide to selecting, growing and propagating” this rather overstates the case. Mark was a bit suspicious of the species selected for inclusion (it is certainly not a comprehensive reference) so we gave it to an expert in Auckland to look at. He flicked through it and responded immediately that there are too many tropicals shown which won’t grow in Auckland, let alone Taranaki and the propagation advice tends to be “sow fresh seed”.

It is very nicely presented book, hardback, well laid out with good photographs. But it is probably too technical for the novice and not technical enough for the enthusiast – a coffee table book in the guise of a reference book.

Author: Michael Tibbs
Publisher: New Holland

Orchids are one of the largest family of plants with over 25 000 separate species which makes them a bit of a challenge. They tend to attract the real enthusiast but it isn’t always easy to know where to start. While there are many orchid books around, this recent release is a sound introduction for a novice.

It covers the basic botany and growth requirements and has fifty useful pages at the end covering the main groups of orchids classified by temperature requirements. Orchid enthusiasts tend to favour growing in pots under cover as opposed to using them as garden plants and this book reflects that focus. In fact there is nothing much at all about growing them outdoors in a garden situation but there is certainly enough basic information to get the hobbyist started.

A large format hardback with many attractive photos, this book is likely to motivate anybody who has more than a passing interest in these exotic and complex flowers.

Author: Maggie Barry with photography by Sally Tagg

Publisher: Random House, $34.99.

Timed for the Christmas market, I am sure, this generous hard cover diary is likely to be a gift welcomed by most gardeners. At one level it functions as a diary with a week per page and sufficient room on each day for brief notes. But the charm lies in the writing and photography.

Maggie Barry is one of the few people in this country who deserves the accolade of “garden guru”. Her knowledge is encyclopaedic. More than that, she is unfailingly enthusiastic about gardening and plants and her notes and reminders are chatty and to the point. This diary is not a replacement for reference books. There are two pages of writing per month and odd reminders dropped into calendar pages so the information provided is pretty random and eclectic but more fun as a result.

Sally Tagg’s full page close up colour photographs are luscious to the point of mouthwatering. The only thing I would have liked is botanic and cultivar names for the photographs.

The diary is bound sturdily and should last the year easily. A nice gift, either for yourself or to give to somebody else.

Author: Gordon Collier

Publisher: NZGT

“New Zealand Gardens of Significance” is a handy little guidebook to the best open gardens in the country, conveniently sized to fit in the glovebox of your car.

Taranaki should be especially proud of this book because out of the 64 gardens listed, 14 are local to our area which translates to 22% – a remarkable achievement. This book should be displayed in every accommodation place in our area with parochial pride.

Each of the gardens deemed to be of national significance standard is given a full page with colour photo, description and all the important details such as address and contact details, opening times, admission charges and website. Regionally significant gardens are given half a page each. Listings are alphabetical to each island rather than geographic which seems a minor mistake to me because people visit gardens geographically, not alphabetically. But I guess some regions have so few gardens that it would only be to Taranaki’s advantage to have its listings in a geographic group.

New Zealand Gardens Trust selects these gardens and is responsible for this handy little book. With backing from Tourism New Zealand, this is the only organisation which has the credibility to put forward these gardens as the best in the country and there is no differentiation between public gardens and the gems of private gardens which open to the public.

As a guidebook, it will have a limited lifespan but comes with a modest price tag of $12, which is not much for 64 pages and many glossy photos. It is a must for anyone who is keen on garden visiting or who hosts out of town visitors. It is distributed by mail order specialists, Touchwood Books.

Author: Peter Thompson

Published by David Bateman Ltd $39.95

I opened this book prepared to be impressed. The author comes with impeccable credentials (a well travelled plantsman and keen gardener with a career in plant physiology at Kew). The first things I spotted as I flicked through were a couple of photographs of our garden here which was a bit of a surprise in a book by an English author.

But no matter how I tried to get to grips with what matrix planting is (and we should know here because the photo captions tell me we practice it well in our own garden) all I kept thinking was that it is making a mystery out of common sense gardening and good gardening practice.

I am not sure that the writing style helps. “Skin-deep eye-appeal, inability to resist ‘bargains’, and belief in promises for quick solutions – that is how we all start buying plants. Finding places for this little collection in the garden is akin to creating a sentence from ‘elephant’ because we like the word; ‘iridotomy’ because the sound intrigues us, even though we are baffled by its meaning; and ‘manufacture’ and ‘bread’ because they sound reassuringly useful.” Leaving aside the questionable punctuation, I could not help but feel that some ruthless editing might have helped to capture the message a little more clearly and concisely. And had the word count been lower, the typeface could have been a little larger. Older readers may need a magnifying glass.

So, best effort here from three of us to translate matrix planting into plain language is that a range of plants best suited to the conditions are grown together to create layers of mixed planting which excludes weeds and generally requires little maintenance.

It is a nicely presented book which is what we have come to expect from Auckland based publishers, Batemans. Lots of good photos. Plant lists which are always rather random by nature but even more so when compiled by an English botanist for New Zealand gardens. And I am not convinced that a ‘mono-matrix’ plant (Gunnera manicata which is on the banned list here anyway) and a ‘temporary matrix’ plant (cardiocrinum giganteum) are not in fact a contradiction in terms in this heady new world of achieving sustainability through careful matrix planting.