Tuesday 13 October 2015

Tips and a review of "Royal Horticultural Society Gardeners' Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers"


  • As land becomes vacant due to the lifting of the main crop potatoes, make sure that you re-crop with a valuable winter crop such as Kale or Sprouting Broccoli. However, if the site is full of wire worms it would be better to broadcast Mustard seed, with the view to digging in the crop later.

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The Royal Horticultural Society Gardeners' Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers.

First off what is The Royal Horticultural Society?

The Royal Horticultural Society is a UK charity established to share the best in gardening. Their work is driven by a simple love of plants and the belief that gardeners make the world a better place.

Among other things they publish books and one of the best of them is :

The Royal Horticultural Society Gardeners' Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers.

If you are looking for a complete encyclopedia of plants and flowers, then this is the book. RHS have laid  the book out in such a way that a non-expert can easily identify species.

You will find that plants are classified by size and colour, which makes it very easy for example, small blue flowers, large white flowered shrubs, trees, etc.

The book has two-thirds of glossy paper with lots of  wonderful images, with expanded sections on common families, and the remainder of the book  is made up of  plain text, that is  given over to the plant dictionary and glossary.

I will say at this point that, there are lots of beautiful colour photography, which really do help when making identification.

 This book has good laid-out introductory sections with good explanations .

Sections include:

Preface
How to use the book
Plant names and origins
Colour in the garden
Plant Selector
Plant Catalogue
Plant Dictionary including common names
Glossary

The Plant Catalogue is divided into the following sections:

Trees
Shrubs
Roses
Climbers
Perennials
Annuals & Biennials
Rock plants
Bulbs
Water plants
Cacti and other succulents.

The Plant Dictionary of the book has a complete listing of more than 8000 plants suitable for growing in temperate gardens worldwide. You will find it includes full descriptions of the characteristics and cultivation of over 4000 plants not already covered in the Plant Catalogue.

The help that is given on where to plant, and caring for the plants I find very useful as well. Also, the book gives all the latin names of the plants.

This really is one of my all time favorite books; a welcome addition to my library!
A brilliant book from the R.H.S. All you ever needed to know about plants with approx eight thousand named plants in this book, there is something for everyone. 
A must have for all gardeners..........