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'Christopher Lloyd’s Garden Flowers: Perennials, Bulbs, Grasses and Ferns' by Christopher Lloyd

Curmudgeonly gardener tells us what we think

Saturday, September 23, 2000

By Susan Banks, Post-Gazette Garden Editor

	Christopher Lloyd’s Garden Flowers: Perennials, Bulbs, Grasses and Ferns By Christopher Lloyd Timber Press $36.95

Christopher Lloyd is an institution in the gardening world. His acerbic writings have long been a favorite of readers everywhere. His column in Country Life magazine has been running continuously since 1963, without a missed issue. He’s also the author of many books; perhaps his most famous, “The Well-Tempered Garden,” was published almost 30 years ago.

Lloyd, who was born in 1921 on the estate of Great Dixter in Britain, still gardens there, and it’s from there he has written his latest offering, which is an overview of his experience in the garden, perennial by perennial (although some that are perennials for Lloyd are not in the United States). But this is more than a compilation of garden plants, it’s also a critique, rich with Lloyd’s personal rantings on any given genus.

For example, on Ajuga he writes:

“I do not want to discourage any enthusiast, but I have given all of them up. They are incorrigible infiltrators and do not suit mixed border conditions. After flowering, they self-sow and all sorts of bastards are the result. Furthermore, they are subject to powdery mildew.”

Or on the topic of Euphorbias:

“ ‘I love all euphorbias’ is a frequently heard claim from fashionable gardeners, for this is a fashionable genus. ‘What about the petty spurge?’ I unkindly ask, for fashionable gardeners need taking down a peg and Euphorbia peplus is just about as miserable a weed as can be imagined. It even suffers from rust. A diseased weed. What could sink lower?”

There is plenty that Lloyd does like, but he is at his finest when he is cranking on something, if only because he says what a lot of us think.

Anna Pavord of tulip fame gushes that this new book is “The book I have been waiting for all my gardening life.”

One would wonder what Lloyd himself would think of that. It is certainly not the greatest gardening book ever to come down the pike, but it is interesting reading. And as I have a great fondness for curmudgeonly gardeners -- being one myself -- and as long as one keeps firmly in mind that we here in Pennsylvania aren’t exactly in the same climate as Great Dixter, no harm is done, and much is learned.

Oh, yeah, the color photographs are wonderful, too.