PLANTING A PARADISE: A YEAR OF POTS AND POLLINATORS
by Arthur Parkison
Kyle Books, £22 ISBN 978-1914239670
An engaging and personal seasonal guide to planting a container garden, with an emphasis on attracting birds and pollinators.
Reviewer Harriet Rycroft is a gardener and container gardening author.
Gardener and florist Arthur Parkinson's ‘favourite floral personalities' guide us through the seasons in the main chapters of this book, including the richly coloured tulips, dahlias, sweet peas and cosmos that have become very much associated with him. Parkinson is an enjoyably opinionated writer, not afraid to be sweary about issues that get his goat (plastic gardens and pesticides among them).
Most of the book is discursively written, touching on wildlife gardening or digressing into television programmes at will, but there are plenty of boxes full of bullet points for readers who prefer to dip in and out. There is sound advice aplenty in both. It is always a privilege to see another gardener's thought processes, whether you agree with all of their methods or not, especially when that gardener is writing from
