John Watkins is Head of English Heritage’s Gardens and Landscape Team. Tom Wright was for 25 years Senior Lecturer in Landscape Management at Wye College. They are two professionals who have made an immense contribution to gardening in this country and abroad. This book makes available their combined lifetimes’ knowledge and experience.
The authors begin by reminding the reader that gardens, if neglected, will revert to woodland, which is the natural climate vegetation of the British Isles. Neglected lawns and borders become first scrub, then forest. Lakes and ponds silt up, then form swamps which are soon colonised by willow and alder. Without maintenance even garden buildings eventually decay, collapse, and become lumps and bumps in the ground.
This has been the fate of many gardens over the last 100 years, as the cost of maintaining their forebears’ creation overwhelmed many owners. High taxation, two world wars, and the shortage and cost of skilled labour are some of the obvious reasons for this decline and fall.
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