Small garden classic

Press, 21 October 1989, Page 27

Small garden classic

The Small Garden. By C. E. Lucas Phillips. Pan paperback, 1989. 414 pp. Illustrations. (Reviewed by Thelma Strongman) This is a paperback edition of an English garden classic which was first published in hardback in 1952. Written by C. E. Lucas Phillips, who was author of several other books such as "Cockleshell Heroes” and “Escape of the Amethyst,” this is a. compact manual of gardening which gardeners of the older generation in England used as their basic text. Lucas Phillips served in both Wold Wars which perhaps explains his chapters entitled “Friend or Foe?”, “The enemy in detail,” and so on. The author writes easily and sparingly and his books contain useful diagrams, notes and lists where applicable. His attitude was always one of trying to assist his readers, and in subsequent editions he particularly disliked the change to metric measurements arguing that his watering can still held gallons. Since his death in 1984, the section on the use of chemicals in the garden has been updated by another. This is a pleasant book and is good value if you can bear to reverse the New Zealand months, seasons, and aspects from those of the Northern Hemisphere.