o gardener can claim omniscience in his
itubject, apart from fanatical specialists who ight know all there is to know about the ulture of individual groups of plants. And or this reason the general gardener seems [ways avid for more information. For hose who are not too learned, this ardener's Companion (first published 1936, ow revised and reprinted) well lives up to
name. It contains much immediately ractical information, including a gardening
calendar, notes on gardening societies and a very full critical bibliography ; at one remove from actual work there are short passages on the uses and abuses of fruits and vegetables, historical notes, remarks on garderi fauna and translations of Latin specific names (though the editor has made nomenclature sound a little too delightfully simple). Then there are useful chapters on basic botany, which will perhaps add to the appreciation of plants as individuals and of the wonders of nature. The piece de resis- tance is two hundred pages of a gardener's anthology," with morsels chosen from sources ranging from the Bible to the Architectural Review, from Shakespeare 'to Johnson, and from Theophrastus to Sir Osbert Sitwell. Here are verse and prose, practice and prejudice, history, discovery, meditation, description and personal inter- ludes. If you are a gardener and like browsing, you could not find a better half-
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