Category Archives: Garden book reviews

Grow it Yourself Vegetables, by Andrew Steens.

In that great surge of garden books on growing edible plants, it is a relief to see one from an author who is doing more than just documenting his or her first year of trial and error, or relying on other people’s research. Andrew Steens brings experience, enthusiasm and qualifications right across the spectrum of gardening and horticulture, focussing in this case on growing vegetables. Readers of the Weekend Gardener will recognise him as one of the panel of fortnightly contributors charting activities (of the fruit and veg persuasion) in their own home gardens. That level of hands on experience does shine through. He has written a book which will pretty much tell you what you need to know about how to grow vegetables and which crops to grow and how to manage your productive garden in a sustainable way. Unusually, he has also given his personal picks for top performing selections by name which is helpful.

On the downside, it is by no means the sharpest designed reference book I have seen. It is a little busy and cluttered which makes it harder to use. There were times I felt that more rigorous editing would have sharpened the writing and cut out some of the extraneous detail which includes preaching to the converted. The author’s recent experience is from Point Wells, north of Auckland. Writing a book to cover all of NZ, which has huge climatic variation, is a big ask. He has made a good fist of it, but I think that southern gardeners may pick more holes in it than we spotted. The big problem that Mark noticed immediately is that the diagrams showing sowing times for marginal crops are way out. If you sow your melons or aubergines in December and January here, you won’t get a crop. They need a long growing season. This appears to be another design flaw. If you read the detail of the text, Steens is absolutely correct when he says they need to be sown from seed and started in small pots well in advance for planting out when the soils have warmed. But that is not what the dinky diagrams on each page tell you because they fail entirely to differentiate between sowing seed direct into the garden or using plants that you started under cover two months earlier.

Despite those reservations, this is certainly one of the better recent publications on the topic full of practical advice and a useful reference.

(Published by Bateman; ISBN 978 1 86953 761 6.)

Threatened Plants of New Zealand

After last week’s book review lambasting an author who was way out of her depth, the first indication that this publication is in a different league altogether is the use of multiple authors, all with short biographies which demonstrate a depth of experience and knowledge of the topic. You can be sure that this major reference book has been extensively peer reviewed.

It was a revelation here just how many of our native plants are threatened with extinction – one in thirteen apparently. We knew about Pennantia baylisiana (down to a single, naturally occurring plant in its habitat on Three Kings Island) because we have a large cutting-grown specimen from it in our own garden. Similarly we knew that the kakabeak was seriously endangered but not that it too was reduced to a single plant in the wild. Many of the other threatened plants were news to us and the authors are flagging real concerns that we are in danger of losing our diversity of native plants. Alas plants are not as cute as black robins or kakapo so they do not garner the same public attention.

This is a sumptuous hardback book with a great deal of technical information but well organised and presented so that a broad spectrum of interested readers can find the information they need. Each entry has its botanical name, conservation status measured by accepted national and international convention, botanical description, details of how to recognise and identify the plant, its distribution, habitat and threats to survival. Add in several photographs and a map showing the location in the wild and you end up with a really good reference book which will last for many years in this country. Its somewhat hefty price-tag is justified and anybody with an interest in our native flora or botany will want to have their own copy on the bookshelf.

Threatened Plants of New Zealand by Peter de Lange, Peter Heenan, David Norton, Jeremy Rolfe and John Sawyer. (Canterbury University Press; ISBN: 978 1 877257 56 8).

The Tui NZ Fruit Garden – dear oh dear.

The latest update on this article is The Sequel, a second coming for Tui NZ Fruit Garden

Sally Cameron is attempting to punch well above her weight in her book The NZ Fruit Garden. Her main experience seems to be in food writing and cooking and she runs a catering company in Auckland. Her gardening credentials are very limited and it shows in this Penguin publication sponsored by the Tui garden products company.

There is nothing wrong with using a researcher to pull together a comprehensive book as long as the editor/publisher ring-fences her with an expert panel to review the information. There is no evidence that this was done. Alas, being a keen home gardener on the North Shore is not sufficient. There are too many errors and in places the information is simply not adequate. Even worse, there are sufficient instances of unacknowledged quotes to make me breathe the dreaded word: plagiarism.

All those multitudes of fruit trees and plants sold in the past two years need attention. Clearly the time is right for a manual. And a manual is what this book is. To be fair, it is a well-presented book designed to be used often – good-quality paper, opens flat and even has a thoughtful heavy-duty plastic cover. The majority of the book is an alphabetical listing of 58 fruits and nuts, each giving some information on the origin, recommended varieties and the where, when and how of growing them. In addition to that, the first 50 or so pages give a great deal of generic information on propagation, planting and care. At the end of the book, there is a section on pests and diseases and a monthly diary for maintenance and harvest tasks. From almonds and apples to walnuts, most of the crops you will ever want to try growing are included – along with quite a few that you cannot grow, though you are not likely to learn that from this book. Tui’s sponsorship is generally unobtrusive. Superficially, the book looks really helpful and the design is good. Sadly, looks can deceive.

I went to double-check some of the information on apricots, particularly the claim that ‘‘many people think they are subtropical’’. In New Zealand, we all know the best apricots come from Central Otago and nobody ever claims that area to be subtropical. According to Cameron, apricot trees are considered subtropical, which means they can tolerate temperatures from 0 degrees Celsius to over 35 degrees Celsius and still remain healthy. Puhlease. That is not a definition of a subtropical plant. Elsewhere in the book, she recommends them as a suitable crop for Northland. But worse was when I found the Wikipedia entry and thought it seemed familiar. It was. I had just read it in the book.

Cameron: There is an old adage that an apricot tree will not grow far from the mother tree.
Wikipedia: There is an old adage that an apricot tree will not grow far from the mother tree.
Cameron: Although often regarded as a subtropical fruit, the apricot is native to a continental climate region with cold winters.
Wikipedia: Although often thought of as a ‘‘subtropical’’ fruit, this is actually false – the apricot is native to a continental climate region with cold winters

The guava entry is a worry. Actually, it’s even more than a worry when I compared it to easily tracked online sources, to which it owes a rather large debt. Cameron: The guava succumbs to frost in any area – it is a tropical fruit after all. Even if summers are too cool, the tree will die back.

There’s a slight problem here. She is writing about the large growing tropical guava, Psidium guajava, which you may have tried eating in Asia (I found it disappointing). But what we can and do grow here – and which has similar hardiness to a lemon – is the strawberry guava, Psidium littorale. The recommended varieties and some of the photos in the Cameron book are of P. littorale, but they are included under the tropical guajava and there is no indication that Cameron knows the difference. In our 30 years of experience with growing littorale, it does not suffer from any of the hideous pests and diseases she lists at length. Added to that is the propagation information, which is bizarre. Why even mention air-layering when it is not recommended and is so rarely done in this country as to be virtually unknown? The reason: because it appears to be cut and pasted from an easily traced Californian website that was all about guajava. Had Cameron known her material, she would have explained that littorale is commonly raised from seed in this country.

Cranberries: what is grown widely and successfully in New Zealand and indeed is now branded the New Zealand cranberry is, in fact, Myrtus ugni. Most New Zealanders wouldn’t even know that it is not the true cranberry and that the fruit used for Ocean Spray cranberry juice and dried or frozen cranberries is, in fact, a vaccinium.We have never heard of proper cranberries being grown in this country, though presumably you could grow them in Southland, because they need cold temperatures and may be happy in the southern peat bogs. Presumably the author didn’t know about cranberries, because the book doesn’t even mention Myrtus ugni, which you can buy from pretty well every garden centre here, but instead is all about vacciniums. That is the problem with using overseas references without local knowledge. Even then the information given is contradictory. In one sentence, vaccinium is recommended for growing around ponds and other soggy areas. In another, it is recommended that you plant it in the coldest, wettest spot in your garden, but adds that the ground should never be waterlogged. Has the author never heard of the cranberry bogs in North America and seen the deliberate flooding of them? And honestly, what rush of creative frivolity led to the recommendation that they are suitable for growing in hanging baskets?

Gooseberries: according to this book, gooseberries need 800 to 1500 hours of chilling in order to fruit well. Really? What constitutes chilling? Is it temperatures below 5 degrees Celsius – 3 degrees, maybe – or below freezing? Nowhere is that information given, which means that it is very hard to start counting your hours of chill. And the huge range is questionable. Does the author mean that gooseberries require a minimum of 800 hours of winter chill below a certain temperature, but if your hours are much more than 1500 (which presumably takes you to alpine areas in this country), the growing season may be too short?

What the New Zealand reader really needs to know is that because gooseberries need a cold winter to fruit well, you are probably wasting your time unless you live in the centre of the North Island or from Christchurch southward. Measuring winter temperatures in hours of chilling is an American custom not usually seen in this country.

Avocados: the advice is that avocados do best inland away from ocean winds. This could be interpreted as suggesting that they will grow more successfully in Inglewood than Waitara, but we can tell you that in this part of the country, you can only grow avocados successfully in mild coastal areas. In fact, even in warmer areas of New Zealand, you can get frosts if you’re more than 5 kilometres inland. So in this country, avocados have to be grown in coastal areas. Again, I tracked the source of Cameron’s information to a Californian website.

The entry on lychees is lifted pretty much word for word from a copyrighted website belonging to the California Rare Fruit Growers (I started with Wikipedia and found it one click through.)

Under quinces, one of the photographs labelled quince blossom is in fact chaenomeles blossom. And while one of the photos of the fruit is indeed a quince, the other one is chaenomeles. And the photo by the quince header is, we suspect a crabapple. It is certainly not a quince. One is left with the uncomfortable suspicion that nobody involved with this book realised that quinces (cydonia) are an entirely different plant to japonica apples (chaenomeles).

I could keep going, listing the glaring deficiencies in this book. It is riddled with them. You can spend $45 on it if you wish and I am sure it will receive glowing reviews in other media because, superficially, it looks good. It is a book that was probably rushed out to meet a market demand and escaped anything but the most perfunctory of editing. It lacks rigour in every aspect. Near enough is close enough and it all looks just lovely, darling.

I don’t wish to be accused of going on a witch-hunt, but I turned back to Cameron’s earlier volume, The NZ Vegetable Garden, also published by Penguin and sponsored by Tui. I actually gave it a good review in this publication. I randomly inspected the garlic entry and went to check a rather odd piece of information. It took me all of two minutes to find a copyrighted website, http://www.garliccentral.com/varieties.html, which contributed at least some of the exact wording for page 116 in that book.

It should be an embarrassment to a credible publishing house like Penguin, but presumably nobody bothered to check for relevance, accuracy, or plagiarism. Looks are all in this current world of publishing and cut and paste has a lot to answer for.

POSTSCRIPT: My, but Penguin acted quickly to recall the book from sale. Given an advance copy of this column, they issued a recall within 24 hours.

Front page of the morning paper, no less.

Colourful Gardens by Dennis Greville

We are so over green gardens, we are past claiming that gardening is primarily about foliage not flowers and equally we have moved on from good taste mono colour palates and static, unchanging gardens. I am with the author on his determination to celebrate seasonal colour and flowers.

Readers of the NZ Gardener magazine will know Dennis Greville as a regular contributor. He is very experienced and competent, both in writing and photography, and I am guessing that he really enjoyed doing this book because at times he treads a fine line between enthusiasm and a hint of purple prose. But an exuberant topic such as colour deserves a somewhat passionate text. The first forty pages give a useful theoretical background, the remaining chapters feature the colour palette and impact in the garden. There are many coloured photographs, on every page in fact and all captioned.

It is not a beginner’s book. Too much plant interest and too many photos of fairly sophisticated planting combinations for that. Hallelujah for an author and a publisher who are not scared to use proper plant names as well as giving the common reference. On an experience scale of 1 to 10 (1 being absolute beginners), this book sits appropriately in the mid level as being suitable for gardeners in that 3 to 6 level of ability and experience.

(Published by New Holland. ISBN 978 1 86966 269 1)