BOOK REVIEWS
WINTER GARDENS
by Clare Foster and Andrew Montgomery
Montgomery Press, £45 ISBN 978-1919650708
Handsome coffee-table tome with lyrical essays capturing the essence of winter. Captivating book for anyone interested in design, gardens or beauty.
Reviewer Humaira Ikram is a garden designer.
I am a master at tsundoku, the art of collecting books in a pile that you may never get around to reading. But Winter Gardens has avoided such a fate. After opening it I found it hard to extract myself. It’s a mix of emotive photographs in sepia and monochrome tones by Andrew Montgomery, surrounded by poetic and illuminating texts by writer Clare Foster.
The book feels like a labour of love. It is impressive in its weight, size and the choice of paper and finish of the pages. I know you should never judge a book by its cover, but the cover image capturing the golden light of winter washing over plant skeletons and seedheads, invites you in to discover more.
Montgomery reveals the bare bones of a garden, which can sometimes be the poor relation to fully saturated summer fripperies, in a way that reminds us that every day in every season there is something of beauty outside. Detail is uncovered and lovingly captured, spilling from the pages, immersing you in every scene; the topiary sentinels standing alone until spring; the textural seedheads standing up against the elements; the icy winds buffeting the trees and hedges.
Covering a selection of well-known, and some lesser-visited gardens in England and Wales, and one from the Netherlands, the book is a testament to the considered seasonal design embodied
