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Michael McCoy's Garden
Michael McCoy (Florilegium 2000)
This is a book about a garden - the trials and tribulations, the successes and triumphs, and the sheer hard work. Along the way the author brings us his influences, his gardening philosophies and not a few tricks of the trade.
A gardener to his very bones, Michael McCoy desires a garden crammed full of plants - unfashionable perhaps but the garden he creates will resonate with every addicted plantaholic, every gardener and lover of plants. Finally able to garden for himself, he sets himself a goal that seems impossible to all but the wealthiest of garden owners - to have a magnificent garden within a season. And this is not a garden that he can throw money at, it is a garden that will be made, the way most of us garden, acquiring cuttings and divisions, sowing seeds and reclaiming plants from friends.
The book leads us through the story of the garden, it's evolution and success - at times its overwhelming success and stop in your tracks appeal, and it's opening under the Australian Open Gardens Scheme. The steps forward are not without slipping backwards, disappointments, seeds that fail to germinate, for this is a real garden and not an idealised, story book adventure where nothing ever goes wrong.
Michael McCoy's irrepressible, enthusiastic personality and love of gardening shine through the pages, making him almost an old gardening friend of the best sort. It is this, and his honesty about what works and what doesn't, that makes this book stand out from the many tales of garden creation available in the bookstores; that and the exceptional photographs, again the work of the talented McCoy. The photographs are a very potent record of the history of the garden, and the sometimes-unorthodox planting combinations shine on the pages.
This is a book that will be picked up and read straight through, and then read again and again for the ideas, inspirations and practical knowledge that it contains.
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