THE COTTAGE GARDEN
by Claus Dalby
Cool Springs Press, £28 ISBN 978-0760379714
A charming, photography-led book that delves into the enduring popularity of cottage gardens from a Scandinavian perspective.
Reviewer Louise Curley is a freelance garden and nature writer.
Claus Dalby is a household name in his native Denmark as a TV gardener, author, publisher and floral designer – a Scandi mix of Monty Don and Sarah Raven. Thanks to social media – he has nearly 500,000 followers on Instagram – his celebrity reaches beyond the Baltic Sea.
This is his second book to be published in English, and in it Dalby looks at the principal proponents of the cottage-garden style, including Gertrude Jekyll, Vita SackvilleWest, William Robinson, Margery Fish and the often forgotten Geoff Hamilton. He then takes us on an enjoyable journey seeking out modernday cottage gardens in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, England and the USA. Each garden has a short description, plus extended captions for the images – more than 700 beautiful photographs taken by Dalby himself.
It was interesting to read a
