The Compendium of Amazing Gardening Innovations

The influence of the guillotine on gardening shear design and the invention of plant-hunting by the pharaoh Hatshepsut in 1500 BCE are just two of the surprising historical tidbits strewn throughout this delightful horticultural survey. Willis (The London Garden Book A–Z), an arts and gardening writer, starts with the Wardian Case, a miniature greenhouse, and finishes up with gardening magazines (the first published in the U.K.: The Botanical Magazine, 1787). In between, she informs green-thumbed readers about herbaceous and mixed borders; “Fairchild’s mule” (the first, albeit infertile, human-made hybrid plant); the lawn mower (patented in 1830); roses, of course; and English landscape gardens. In general, the U.K. dominates her subjects, but the U.S. sneaks in, too, in references to New York City’s High Line, the now-gone Gardens of the Nations at Rockefeller Center, and Washington, D.C.’s Dumbarton Oaks estate. Chief among the delights of the book is the wry humor: on techniques for mowing prairie planting, she cautions parenthetically, “bison need not apply.” Another delight comes from Dave Hopkins’s b&w engravings. While marred by its minuscule font size, this book will otherwise make a welcome addition to any gardener’s library. (Sept.)