Slatcher: Gardening with Wild Plants

Julian Slatcher

Many of us grow wild plants in our gardens without even realising. Lady's mantle, pasque flower, lily of the valley - just three of the large number of British natives suitable for, and worthy of, garden cultivation.

Gardening with Wild Plants by Julian Slatcher adds many more to the list. It sets out to put over 200 wild plants into garden habitats, such as shade, bog garden or meadow, including native trees and shrubs. It is attractively illustrated with his photographs, although I would have preferred to see more plants growing in garden situations, rather than plant portraits, which are available in any book on wildflowers.

Inspite of its logical layout and good tips on cultivation, this book unfortunately perpetuates some of the ‘myths' surrounding wildflower cultivation. The misconception that poppies, cornflowers, and corncockles are meadow flowers, which will happily coexist with grass is repeated here. These annual wildflowers will only self sow into relatively bare soil, turned annually, and when planted into grass, or sown with meadow grass seed, will soon die out. They are the flowers of cornfields, where the soil was continually turned and tilled, and they thrived amid the annual disturbance.

Despite this, and a few other oddities, including the strange use of a Californian poppy on almost every page, pictures of garden cultivars of some species (which purists will hate) and the inclusion of some invasive species I would certainly not recommend for garden use, this book is still a useful and attractive addition to the gardener's bookshelf.

186 pages, £13.95
ISBN 1 86108 165 0. Guild of Master Craftsman Publications Ltd
2000

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Other books of related interest:
The Wildflower Garden by Noel Kingsbury (BCA 1 85029 539 5)
The National Trust Book of Wildflower Gardening by John Stevens (Dorling Kindersley 0 86318 219 4 Sadly out of print, but still the best on this subject)