Book Review: The Brother Gardeners by Andrea Wolf

Wulf begins The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire & the Birth of an Obsession by recounting her bewilderment on moving to England from Germany and finding all the people around her were obsessed with gardening. "I went with a trendy graphic designer to a nightclub, only to listen for half the evening to the minute details of the yield of his vegetable garden," she recalls in a series of remembered encounters with avid gardeners. Being an inquisitive sort and an author, she set out to find out just why and how England had become so obsessed with gardening. The result is a lovely horticultural mystery covering England's discovery of overseas plants from the early eighteenth century through to the triumphant reign of the garden in the nineteenth century, from England's days as a gardening backwater to its emergence as a primary source of gardening advice and plants.

The book begins with a cautious hybridization as Charles Fairchild crossed a sweet William with a carnation, demonstrating that that plants produced sexually and creating a beautiful new plant at the same time. Wulf continues to profile plant breeders, plant importers, and their gardens going, moving on through Peter Collinson and his American contact John Bartram in the 1730's and on, Miller and his practical gardening advice in 1731, the irascible Carl Linnaeus with his new means of classifying plants, Banks botanical voyaging around the world, and many more. Each time she gives a sense of the people's characters, their place in the botanical world, the impact they had, and a tour of their gardens.

Garden growth went hand in hand with the spread of the British Empire as the British imported plants from each new colony and conquest, mixing and matching to create the ideal spread each gardener envisioned. Banks, in particular, also wanted solid, practical advice for growing useful plants which were transported around the world to serve the Empire's needs and whims.

The Brother Gardeners was a solid, interesting read about one of my favorite topics—gardening and gardening history (Or is that two topics? One and a half? Something like that). It won't necessarily pull people who aren't gardeners or interested in history into the fold, but it will interest those who are.

There were also random bits of "I never thought of that." For example, and I should blush to admit this: I have always thought of Botany Bay primarily in terms of Star Trek₍₁₎. It never occurred to me that here, on this planet, in this history, it was called Botany Bay because when Banks landed there, it was a great place for botany, and he gathered a lot of plants there.

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₍₁₎ "Botany Bay?! Botany Bay! Oh no!"

Book Review: The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Obsession, Commerce, and Adventure by Adam Leith Gollner

Warning: It is dangerous to read this book if you also receive seed catalogs; it is especially so if you are getting rare seed and heirloom catalogs.

While on a trip to Brazil, Gollner stops at a local market and buys a bag full of unfamiliar fruits, discovering a whole array of new tastes. This sets him on the road to exploring the world of fruit and fruit enthusiasts, ultimately taking him on a series of trips and interviews as he learns about the kinds of fruit not typically available in American supermarkets, the way fruits have been altered to fit the supermarket model, and how and why some flavored fruits are coming back to consumers.

I'm of two minds about this book. On the one hand, Gollner can write, and write well. His descriptions of tropical fruit are mouth-watering; I want to try them all. He also does a lot of interviewing and travelling to far-flung places to try his new fruits and meet with fruit enthusiasts, many of whom are quite eccentric. On the other, some of the earlier facts he cites seem to have been chosen more for being spectacular than for being actually factual, and that means that I put question marks next to anything he didn't directly experience or that I cannot verify through other reading.

The opening chapter or so has a medley of fruit facts. They're all quite interesting, but they include things like Gollner casually relating that plants "even possess a form of intelligence: bananas and oranges connected to lie-detecting polygraphs have been shown to respond to mathematics questions in experiments by by Dr. Ken Hashimoto and Cleve Backster. Aked how much two plus two is, the plants emit a hum that forms into four peaks when translated into ink tracings." No. Just--no. Plants do not have nervous systems or ears. Lie detectors are not a good way of measuring their knowledge₍₁₎. I think this was pretty clear by 2008, the book's publication date. Similarly, he makes the occasional blithe statement about prehistoric man as though we really, truly, clearly knew what said individual thought and did. We have ideas, but full awareness of ritual? Not so much. Complicating this last is the absence of any sort of footnoting or clear works cited. There's a "Further Reading" list that looks interesting, but not an "All my research is here" list. So, lots of things had to have question marks beside them.

That said, I still enjoyed the book a lot. Much of Gollner's information comes from interviews and directly trying the fruits in question, which ups the reliability quotient of the book as a whole. And, as I said, he can write. Take this description of dragon fruit "crisp white flesh dotted with small black seeds, like a solidified milk shake...shocking pink rinds and black and white interiors.... The delicate flavor is vaguely reminiscent of strawberries and concord grapes" Don't you want to try it now? Or mangosteen "Each self-contained section is just firm enough to suspend the incomparable juice in a perfect degree of tension. I could say that it tastes like minty raspberry-apricot sorbet, but the only way to truly know a mangosteen is to try one." His writing throughout is lively and engaging, making him good company for arm-chair traveling through the world of fruit.

And the whole project of Fruit Hunters--tracking down as many fruits as possible and meeting with as many fruit enthusiasts as he can, is appealing. Gollner meets with quite an array of guides and eccentrics as he talks to fruitarians (people who live only on fruit), the creator of Grapples (artificially grape-flavored apple (Yuck!)), a fruit photographer who describes Gollner as his groupie, the owner of a hotel willing to share his rare lady fruit, and others.

On the whole, I recommend The Fruit Hunters to folks who like slice-of-life reading, eccentrics, or gardening. But I repeat: Don't read this and any sort of garden catalog, email, or website at the same time. Just don't (see below for why).

A partial list of things I want to grow now so that I can taste them--only, I don't really have room for an orchard!

Mangosteen (a tree)
More kinds of figs (I have a Brown Turkey fig tree that just started bearing. They are good).
Longan (Tree again)
Dragon Fruit (Cactus)
Kishu (a variety of mandarin)
Mara de Bois strawberries (Those I might be able to fit in somewhere).
Chocolate vine (Maybe I could fit it in? Though I wonder how many kinds there are--Gollner's source makes it sound desirable; I just read a how-to on flowers.about.com calling it "not very palatable." Then again, I am growing Wonderberry, which is either delicious or insipid, depending on who you ask, just to find out what I think, so the discrepancy doesn't rule out the vine; "rampant growth, on the other hand, might prove a problem. I already grow passion vine, which is quite rampant enough)

At least I'm already growing Charanteis melon! I even have a few extra plants needing re-homing.

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₁ For a much better and thoroughly fascinating look at the sorts of things plants know and can do, plus a good look at plant science, try What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz.

Random side note: This book appears to have several covers. On the whole, I like the second one (the one on the copy I read), best of what I've seen.

Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden: A Natural Approach to Pest Control by Jessica Walliser

I love bugs and I love gardening, so it should come as no surprise to anyone that I read books that combine the two. Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden: A Natural Approach to Pest Control by Jessica Walliser is the best I've read so far. Walliser explains clearly why organic gardening involves not just avoiding pesticides but also inviting bugs to live in your garden. The goal is to create a miniature ecosystem where while the "bad bugs" are never completely gone (there has to be something for the "good bugs" to eat), there is a thriving population of bad-bug predators to keep things in check.

Walliser gives a short introduction about this practice plus several essays on various aspects of insect growth and kind, giving portraits, both verbal and visual, of several of the insects so the gardener can get to know them. There is also a large section on plants that attract beneficials with notes on which specific types they attract—many attract several—together with photographs of the plants. She also includes suggested garden arrangements for folks who want some help planning their beneficial additions.

Two incidental details that made me happy: She answered a long-standing question of mine: Is the nectar of different plants different, or is it just sugar water as some have told me? (Yes, It is different; the Walliser gives several points about where and why). And, she gave me an excuse to keep Feverfew, even though I don't actually use it for anything. Not that I needed an excuse, but it's nice to have one.

Recommended for gardeners, insect lovers, and, especially, insect-haters.

A Garden of Marvels by Ruth Kassinger

A Garden of Marvels: How We Discovered that Flowers Have Sex, Leaves Eat Air, and Other Secrets of Plants by Ruth Kassinger is one of this year's great discoveries. Kassinger expertly weaves together history, botany, and personal experience to create a book that enlivens the garden by enlightening the gardener.

Kassinger starts with the Greeks, talking about the various misunderstandings that began with them (except for Theophrastus, who apparently had a pretty good idea that plants weren't just like animals) and persisted for centuries and moving on through to the present day with studies of plant genetics and cloning. Mixed with these historical and character sketches is information about what this means for the gardener today often framed in discussions of Kassinger's own clearly much-loved garden.

The prose is lively and clear, and Kassinger is good at sharing her interest with others; I will be looking for more of her work. As a side note: after everything I learned about petunia genetics, I am definitely buying some seeds next year. Those plants are crazy strange! I'm tempted to buy a black petunia, also, because the original plant was a one-time miracle and I'm entranced.

I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys gardening and/or history and/or just plain good writing

Publication Information
Hardcover, 416 pages
Published February 25th 2014 by William Morrow
ISBN 0062048996 (ISBN13: 9780062048998)

Other Reviews, found through Fyrefly's Book Blog Search
Pages of Julia's Blog
A guest post/the book's intro by Ruth Kassinger on Book Club Girl
Did you write a review I should include? Let me know!