Written by Alan Hickman
The convenient thing about adages and sayings is that there’s one for every occasion. For instance: "If you can’t say something good about someone, then don’t say anything." is always handy if you’re out to avoid an issue. P. T. Barnum on, the other hand, had a different take on publicity. Old Phineas, a master of self-promotion, supposedly told a reporter "I don’t care what you say about me. Just spell my name right."
"Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it" is a cautionary reminder for people who invite independent reviews of this restaurant or that play, and it certainly applies to the publisher of a recently released garden-related book.
A few weeks ago a postcard came from Lone Pine Publishing asking if I would be interested in receiving a review copy of Container Gardening for Canada, co-authored by Laura Peters, Alison Beck and Don Williamson. Free book? Silly question!
Container planting is not at all my long suit. I know the basics: light, gritty, free-draining growing medium and the bigger the pot the better, but I’ve no talent for choosing or matching plants. A book of plant combinations and lists of plants, which can survive the hostile temperature variations and the constricted space of a container, should be a really useful addition to any gardener’s library.
When the book and press-kit arrived, I knew in seconds that this was not the book that was going to solve my problems. I certainly wasn’t going to need the laudatory snippets provided for reviewers’ convenience. I felt like a judge at a church fete. How do you tell a mother she’s got a really ugly baby?
I’ll try finding something good to say. Well, the textured cover has a quality feel to it and it should stand up to any use that it gets. At $19.95 for 224 pages, the price falls within my arbitrary rule-of-thumb - ten cents or less per page. The photography is first class. The illustrations are composed with an artist’s eye and have the pin-sharp resolution we have come to expect from digital cameras and printing. In fact, as a picture-book, Container Gardening might have worked because some of the plates are really quite beautiful.
But now we come to the other stuff. Flipping backwards through the pages of the plant section, the first disaster was immediately apparent. Rose, Plectranthus, Piggyback Plant, Phormium, Petunia, Persicaria. What sort of arrangement is this? In the text the authors write: "... readers are strongly encouraged to learn (the) botanical names. Common names are sometimes shared by several different plants, and they can change from region to region. Only the true botanical name defines the specific plant everywhere on the planet."
So, are plants listed by botanical name? Of course not. What there is, is an incomprehensible mish-mash of colloquial names and botanical genus names. Geraniums are filed under ‘C’ for cranesbill, but Pelargoniums are not under ‘S’ for storksbill, they’re in ‘G’ for Geranium! I can only wonder if any latin-phobe looking for Kiss-Me-Over-The-Garden-Gate would think of looking for it under ‘P’ for Persicaria.
The listing of the popular Japanese Painted Fern, under ‘A’ for Athyrium, reveals yet another confusion. In the index, although there is an entry under K for Knotweed, there is nothing under J for Japanese or P for Painted or even F for Fern.
About the only positive thing that can be said about the jumble is that it is non-discriminatory. It doesn’t matter if you are familiar with botanical names or if you’re looking for something your granny had, you likely won’t find it.
Given that this is supposed to be in the ‘How To’ genre, one might think that, for each of the illustrations, a simple diagram showing pot dimensions, layout and a plant list would be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, in this book, you’re going to look in vain for that sort of practical detail.
Notwithstanding all the chaos and omissions, what is most troubling is the apparent inclusion of embedded advertising. We know that marketers will pay big bucks to get their cars prominently featured in a Tom Cruise movie or to get their brand name on Brad Pitt’s underwear, but, to me at least, finding ‘product placement’ in a quasi-technical book is something new.
Although I have no proof that there was any financial consideration or that there was any external influence on what plant material was featured in the book, when the front cover picture and more than fifty other illustrations are credited to ‘Proven Winners’, and when there are more than a dozen references to that brand in the text, my suspicious mind starts to fret over the independence of the book’s authors.
Did I get anything new from this unfortunate book? Actually yes. It had never occurred to me before to use immature shrubs in a leading or supporting role when putting together a planter. But then, perhaps the $25.00 price tag for a one-gallon size ‘Proven Winners’ Sambucus ‘Black Lace’ - filed under E for Elder - had something to do with that.
Oh well. Mr Barnum might have appreciated that at least I tried to get the spelling right.
Answer April 5???
d. any of the above
???If the clippings are left on the lawn:
a Thatch will be a problem
b Fertilizer applications can be halved
c Twice as much nitrogen will be needed
Day -1 A few flurries 2cm Winds 30km/h P.O.P.60%
Night -7 chance of flurries Winds 30km/h P.O.P.40%
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