What's in a name?

Who Does Your Garden Grow?. By Alex Pankhurst. 2006. B. B. Mackey Books (North American edition), Wayne, PA. 168 pp. $15.95.

Are you tired of all the garden books with 48 pages of text and a whopping A-Z list of plants regurgitated from every other gardening book on your shelf? (There’s the curse--now there’s little doubt I’ll write one myself some day and have to eat these words…). We all have far too many of these weighting down our shelves, so it’s particularly refreshing to have encountered this wonderful little book.

Who Does Your Garden Grow? tells the stories of the names behind over 100 cultivars of plants familiar to all gardeners. The British have had the good fortune of enjoying it for fifteen years or so and B. B. Mackey Books had the good sense to bring it to North America.

Learn how a slow train and a bit of mischief led to the introduction of the wonderful double daisy known as Leucanthemum x superbum ‘Esther Read’. Discover the origin of Shirley poppies, and meet Rev. William Wilks, the gardening vicar that developed them. The Linaria ‘Canon Went’ blooming in my garden just now? The story of its naming is one of the least interesting of the lot…BUT now I know.

Familiar names from the horticultural pantheon are also present and there is no lack of anecdotes for each. You may know the story of ‘Miss Wilmott’s Ghost’, but you’ll learn more about the enigmatic Ellen Wilmott and her garden, Warley Place, than you knew before. Although she preferred simple, elegant flowers, Nora Barlow, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, has achieved immortality as the namesake of Aquilegia vulgaris ‘Nora Barlow’ the ancient double flowered columbine. She considered the plant and oddity and grew if for many years before it was commercially introduced.

Plants were chosen on the basis of their status in modern day gardens and staying power. There is no claim of comprehensiveness, but how could there be? Many classic cultivars are no longer in cultivation, having been lost over the years or superseded by “improved” forms. Many modern cultivars, not yet having proved their worth, are not included.

There is a decidedly anglophilic bent to the collection—totally understandable given the history of horticulture and naming of cultivars. It should prove an inspiration to gardeners in other parts of the world to record the stories of their contributions to the plant palette of our gardens.

The stories are quick easy reads and are supplemented by an index that covers each plant named in the book. The vignettes are focused and achieve the desired result of illuminating what would otherwise be an unknown (and unknowable) facet of gardening—how many of our favorite plants got their names. Pankhurst writes with vigor and good cheer. It is a grand start to a “who’s who” of horticulture.

Perhaps the highest compliment a reviewer can pay an author? I gave my review copy to a friend and avid gardener before I could finish reading it and bought another copy for myself.

It begs the question, Who Else Does Your Garden Grow? Volume II anyone?

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Copyright  2006- 2007 by Carlo A. Balistrieri.
All rights reserved.