I remember reading somewhere that Beth Chatto always has a small bunch of seasonal flowers in the house where she can really appreciate them. Bringing home-grown flowers inside is a real pleasure for me too, you get to see the fine detail on petals and leaves close-up.
If you’d like to do something a bit more creative than just cutting flowers, ‘The Crafted Garden’ by Louise Curley is full of ideas for craft projects inspired by the authors’ garden, plants, flowers and allotment.
The Crafted Garden
It’s arranged into four sections covering each of the seasons
This is what the page lay-outs look light, lovely photos and clear information
and includes information such as how to dry flowers, propagate plants and frost flowers and leaves, and there’s an extensive list of suppliers for the projects in the back of the book.
As well as the inspiration and ideas for making things, I really like the emphasis on sustanability. It’s good to be reminded that natural products like jute and cotton ribbon can be used instead of plastic ribbon. There are ideas about how to support cut flowers in containers, rather than using that green florists foam, which isn’t biodegradable or recyclable and ends up in land-fill.
Foraging pine-cones, berries, moss and twigs is encouraged whilst emphasising not to take more than you need or damaging the environment whilst you’re at it.
With Christmas just round the corner, there are plenty of ideas for making gifts and decorating the house using natural materials.
The photos by Jason Ingram are lovely, and the pages are attractive and practical, divided up with the ingredients listed in a box rather than having large blocks of text.
How to make a terrarium, these are very on-trend at the moment.
I would have liked to have known a bit more about the author to give it all some context and to have had captions for the photos, most were obvious but not all. These little niggles don’t detract from what is a well put-together book with some creative, attractive projects, and it would make a nice christmas gift.
It’s published by Francis Lincoln, ISBN 978-0-7112-3629-5
Read a review of Great Gardens of London here.
Happy gardening, Jill
all photos: Jill Anderson
Disclaimer: I was given this book to review by the publisher, but I’m always completely objective about what ever I’m reviewing.
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