A Garden From A Hundred Packets Of Seed

James Fenton

Editions

Review

Poet, critic and academic James Fenton is revealed both as a gardener of some distinction and a loose cannon in matters horticultural, in this diminutive hardback in which he urges us to resist the tyranny of the garden designer and suggests a looser attitude to planning and planting with annuals.

He recommends 100 plants, all to be grown from seed with which, every year if we choose, we can create our personal Eden, be it in window–box or meadow, and in 10 breezy chapters he examines his elected list, with information on suppliers, further reading suggestions as well as planting instructions.

On the whole I’m fairly resistant to books which qualify as “small and delightful” but one would have to be churlish indeed not to respond to the charm and vigour of Fenton’s erudition, and I predict it will become a perennial stocking-filler. - review by Stewart Grimshaw