Fondly remembered

Rummaging around the house on a dreary lockdown day, it’s surprising what you can find tucked away on a top shelf.

The Keith Winser, published back in 1953, is the gardening equivalent of The Commonsense Cookery Book. Written in a sort of easy Australian Women’s Weekly style by a series of “experts”, it urges using plenty of “fresh fowl manure”, warns against dahlia bulbs of “doubtful origin” and provides lots of of charts about planting times etc.

The Alec Blombery was published in the 60s by Angus and Robertson at the height of the suburban fashion for planting native gardens, so there are probably many Blomberys lurking on top shelves.

The Stan Kelly has 250 of Stan’s exquisite watercolours (one plate per page) of 250 different eucalypts. The plates are identified by a botanist and a taxonomist. Stan’s day job was as engine driver, chugging trains through the forests of regional Victoria. 

P.S. Both Blombery and Kelly effusively thanked their wives for “their help and patience”.

August 2021