Gardening at Eden: And How to Do It at Home - Hardcover

Biggs, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 190581111X ISBN 13: 9781905811113

Publisher: Transworld Publishers, 2007

Synopsis

The Eden Project in Cornwall, England is unique as a botanic garden: it is young enough that those who created it are still around to share their vast gardening knowledge. Written and photographed during a year spent with Eden’s experts, this book focuses on Eden’s various habitats and how they are gardened; the horticultural techniques used and the lessons learned; and how this gardening expertise and experience can be applied to one’s own garden. Genuinely inspirational, this gardening guide is lavishly illustrated and full of practical advice.

About this title

About the Author

Matthew began his gardening career in Leicester Parks' Department, became Head Gardener at a private house and ran his own landscaping and maintenance company. He gained practical qualifications at Pershore College of Horticulture and then a Diploma in Horticulture from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he also worked as Staff Training Officer and as a specialist guide. He has appeared on many TV gardening programmes: Garden Club; The Cook's Garden; Garden Club Question Time and How Does Your Garden Grow; and directed Grass Roots. For 15 years he was guest expert on LBC's gardening phone-in, and is now a panel member on R4's Gardener's Question Time. He lives near St Albans with his young family, and is a guest lecturer at the English Gardening School when he's not leading groups on gardening cruises world-wide, satisfying a passion for tropical plants.

From Publishers Weekly

This massive coffee-table book documents the Eden Project, a megabotanical garden with the biggest Biomes (greenhouse domes ) in the world (for who would want to visit the second-largest?) built in a barren clay pit in Cornwall, England. Former record producer and Eden promoter Tim Smit describes its genesis: we had the idea to build... giant conservatories which would tell the story of human dependence on plants. With an intent to interpret what wildness looks like and then to explore its domestication, Biggs (Matthew Biggs's Complete Book on Vegetables) focuses on two climates: the humid tropics, site of the first human adaptation to the wild in its early domestication, and the warm temperate, relevant to the birth of Western civilization, and also including regions in South Africa, California and the Mediterranean. The book is loaded with gorgeous photographs of exotic plants, like the stinky, extravagantly phallic Titan arum, lush meadows of prairie flowers as well as the more pedestrian potatoes and apples—and, of course, glimpses of the soap bubble–like Biomes. Biggs's advice on how to duplicate Eden plantings in your own garden contains information on composting, growing,and pest control, but much of it will not be new to gardeners, although tips about growing exotic plants such as yardlong beans and bitter gourd and tidbits like the history of the sweet pea are intriguing. American readers are apt to be flummoxed by Anglicisms such as temperatures given in centigrade. (July)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Transworld Publishers
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 190581111X
• ISBN 13: 9781905811113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320