GUIDE TO A GARDEN ART

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34047, 10 January 1976, Page 8

GUIDE TO A GARDEN ART

Compost Gardening. By W. E. Shewed Cooper. Reed. 118 pp. Index. N.Z. price $6.50. Gardeners who have mastered the art of composting are often enthusiasts for their own methods. Many of them have written books which indicate their success as gardeners far exceeds their ability to describe what they have done. This handsome new English volume, recently reprinted in New Zealand, has the great virtues of clarity and commonsense. Above all, it explains why composting and compost gardening works. It does so in great detail for a great variety of plants and situations, yet it also includes a brief, simple, general account of compost gardening which can be read and understood in an evening — and should encourage any gardener to build compost bins the next day. This reviewer delayed writing about the book until Mr Shewell-Cooper’s methods had been tested. They work. Almost anything that comes out of the ground can go back into the compost — even newspapers. Compost

gardening is giving results and there is no reason to doubt the author’s contention that, in time, compost can do away with the need to dig. An inch-deep layer of compost over the garden will gradually attract sufficient worms to do all the work of turning over the ground and aerating it instead. Weed seeds buried under compost remain dormant. Lawns are improved by it. Even new gardens, or very old ones, badly overgrown, can be turned into attractive and flourishing properties more readily with the help of compost. Other sections of the book deal with gardens close to the sea, with small town-house gardens, and with garden design. All improved by T compost, of course. New Zealand gardeners have one great advantage over the author’s original English readers. Very few of us are likely to be troubled by an influx of moles pursuing the rich worm colonies in our compost. But we can face a great variety of other hazards — from moths to mint-rust — confident of help from our compost.