Monday 31 March 2008

Holiday Reading

Thanks to Garden Monkey’s recent Big Bash Books, posing the question, “What’s your favourite garden book and why?” three books arrived on my doorstep this morning:

· Karel Čapek’s The Gardener’s Year
· Beth Chatto’s Garden Notebook
· James Alexander-Sinclair’s 101 Bold and Beautiful Flowers

The first two emerged as favourites in the survey and therefore begged to be read. And 101 Bold and Beautiful Flowers has only just been published (which likely explains the lack of mentions in the Big Bash Books survey) and has been plugged on numerous blogs so joined the order list.

All three are timely arrivals as I have a lengthy journey to Cape Town later in the week, where I will be spending a few days.

I’m hoping to get the time to make it to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens but if anyone has any recommendations for other gardens worth visiting in that neck of the woods, then feel free to suggest them here!

2 comments:

Zoë said...

Hi there, like you am new to Blotanical, so thought I'd be neighbourly and pop over and say hello. When are you going to SA? We plan to September/October time. Might be worth checking out BBC website for Monty Don's around the world in 80 gardens, he visited a a couple of stunners on the cape, albeit briefly, it may give more details of public opening

Garden Sketcher said...

Hi Zoë, thanks for popping by to say hello. Hello to you too! I’m off to SA tomorrow evening for a week. Can’t wait! I saw the Monty Don episode on Cape Town and one of his is on my list: Kirstenbosch. One of the others, the City Garden, is like a public park so will probably make it there at some point. The other two, though, appear to be private gardens and, without a BBC film crew in tow, I suspect my chances of getting in may be limited. But we will see. I’ll be sure to post some pictures up soon.