Year at Barnsdale: The Inspiring Legacy of Geoff Hamilton's Beautiful Garden Book

Even after more than a century, Gertrude Jekyll's 1899 classic, "Wood and Garden," is amazingly relevant. In easy to read language, she offers modern gardeners organic solutions, help with difficult soils, and suggestions on finding the right plant for the right place. For anyone nostalgic for what may seem a simpler time, she's got descriptions of such old-time occupations as the barrel hoop making that kept her team of gardeners at work during slow times. And anyone who simply loves beauty will revel in the descriptions of garden and countryside.

The 1981 edition is illustrated both with Jekyll's own black and white photographs of her garden at Munstead Wood (much of which has since been lost) and color photos of modern gardens with approximations of her plantings.

Contrary to the popular conception of Jekyll's style, she didn't expect most garden lovers to have 200-foot long flower borders, offering scaled down suggestions, including some for window boxes and patio-sized gardens of potted plants. And far from being a plant snob, she loved annuals such as easy to grow zinnias, marigolds and geraniums.

"Not once but many a time my visitors have expressed unbounded surprise when they saw (geraniums) in my garden, saying, 'I should have thought that you would have despised Geraniums.' On the contrary, I love Geraniums. . . I love their strangely-pleasant smell, and their beautiful modern colourings of soft scarlet and salmon-scarlet and salmon-pink, some of these grouping beautifully together."

Of course, she had her pet peeves -- the still-seen lust for ugly on a stick new plant varieties whose only selling point is their novelty, people who place total dependence on their hired gardeners (for today, read "lawn care companies) and then complain about the results.

The only thing lacking in this 20th century edition of "Wood and Garden" is an updated plant glossary. Taxonomists are notorious for changing plant names. Not Jekyll's fault, but pity the poor gardener today looking for her beloved Funkia (now Hosta) or a Megasea (now Bergenia), and so on. Since some of the cultivars Jekyll used have since been lost, and suggestions of more modern alternatives also would be greatly appreciated.