MRS MARION GRAN

Evening Star, Issue 21630, 27 January 1934, Page 19

MRS MARION GRAN

ANOTHER BOOK ABOUT GARDENS Airs Marion Oran has had a rose named after her, and well she deserves the honour, for if ever there was a lover of gardens she is one. Fortunately, too, Mrs Marion Gran (the rose) is one that is tlifcely to stay. So many are advertised in the catalogues for a year or two and are then discarded. Airs Gran (the writer) has been able to transfer her experiences to paper, and the result is a number of entertaining and instructive hook®. She began with ‘ The Garden of Ignorance,’ which related her efforts as a novice in tbe_ horticultural art. Her latest is ‘ I Know a Garden,’ a sufficiently attractive title, but hardly expressing the scope of-the book. It contains what she describes as “some light-hearted sketches of a few of the English gardens I know, and of their owners, many dear and delightful, who are painting their picture uponj the earth in their day, with whom we may share the thrill gardeners alone know, that sting of pleasure which makes our eyes go bright and hearts sing,’ and cause the ignorant and the outcast to call us mad.” Airs Gran takes us to the gardens of famous people, among them being Air John Alasefield and his wife at Boar’s Hill, Oxford, Air and Airs Drinkwater, the late Alice Aleynell, Lewis Hind, Warwick Deeping, and the late Aliss Gertrude Jekyll. Other gardens, public and private, are visited, and excursions made to various flower shows and centres Chelsea. Wolverhampton, Wisley, etc. _ In Sir William Milner’s beautiful Yorkshire garden §he admired the “ buds of the beautiful White New Zealand buttercup ranunculus Lyalli,” and we see her driving off to judge at a show with Air Neville Chamberlain and Mr Blumenfeld (editorial chief of the ‘ Daily Express’). Alany stately homes are visited, and the gardens described. Airs Gran loves every flower and tree that grows, and she scatters her loro with a prodigal hand. She does not write in catalogue style, but gives vent to a lively imagination, in which English history is blended with the love of the countryside. Airs Gran has travelled far, literally and otherwise, since she made her first horticultural attempt in “ the garden of ignorance,’’ and the fruits of her work and experience are to be found in this book. Our copy of ‘ I Know a Garden ’ is from the publishers (Herbert Jenkins Limited).

Mr Hugh Ruttledge, who was a member of the recent Mount Everest Expedition, is writing a book about their adventures. ,