BOOK REVIEWS

Stone, Rock & Gravel
Natural Features for Modern Gardens

Kathryn Bradley-Hole
Distributed by Hodder Moa Beckett
$NZ54.95

ROCKS, stones and gravel have so many uses in the garden: from a striking boulder feature in a Japanese-style courtyard to a crunchy gravel path leading along an informal English-style perennial border.

Kathryn Bradley-Hole, a well-known British garden writer, examines the use of these natural elements to create rock gardens, scree and herb gardens, rock walls and raised beds. There is a chapter on slabs and stepping stones and, of course, this book would not be complete without a section on water gardens, for it in is this setting that rocks look best.

This is a beautiful book, but it is useful too, with lots of handy hints peppered about its pages. For example, use a spoon from your kitchen to lever little plants into rock crevices, or dig out tiny planting pockets with a kebab skewer stick.

Rock garden plants are also covered in depth, as are the plants that thrive in informal gravel gardens.

Weekend Gardener, Issue 91, January 31-February 13, 2002, Page 30

Reproduced with permission from the former Weekend Gardener magazine. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the RNZIH