Seeing gardening as a serious and even outrageous art form has placed Anne Wareham well outside of what usually passes for discussion of gardens. Impatient with received ideas, eager to provoke, The Bad-Tempered Gardener is the story of her development as a thinking gardener and the creation with her husband, Charles Hawes, of their acclaimed garden in the Welsh borders, the Veddw.
From the strange (plant obsessives, a bizarre debut as a television presenter) to the everyday (deadheading, sharing a garden), with frequent paeans to favourite plants and thoughtful pieces on show gardens and status, this is an intelligent, pugnacious and engaging book. It also unflinchingly conveys the challenges, the hard work, triumphs and failures behind the creation and development of a substantial contemporary garden.
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'At once entertaining, opinionated and deliciously annoying.'
(James Alexander Sinclair )'Challenging rather than bad-tempered, The Bad Tempered Gardener is certainly strongly voiced, argumentative and full of a sharp edged wisdom that those of us who want to make better, more beautiful gardens need to be attending to.’
(Sara Maitland )'When, at Veddw in Monmouthshire, Wareham replants the lines of vanished hedgerows with box and fills the enclosed spaces with grasses and hardy perennials, she is linking the land-use of the past with the aesthetic of the lordly parterre. By giving expression to contemporary sensibility about conservation, she invites intellectual engagement.'
(Germaine Greer )Anne Wareham gardens at Veddw House in Monmouthshire with her husband Charles Hawes. Their two-acre garden is quirky and so is she, but this book is full of original thought and it's honest. Two acres between two is tough going! The Lucky Jim anti-version of gardening books.
(Oxford Times )If you love gardening but hate the pretensions surrounding it, this is the book for you.
(Yorkshire Evening Post )We're used to friendly faces and kind words in the gardening world, whether it's on TV or in print. People who give gentle encouragement, enthuse about reliable plants and impart wise advice. Then there's Anne Wareham. Gardener, author and sometime TV presenter, her latest book might well get her known as the Simon Cowell of the green-fingered scene.
(Scotsman )Outspoken, candid and occasionally controversial, Anne Wareham is a unique voice in the gardening world.
(Topiarius )A different sort of gardening book.
(Western Mail Series )An intelligent, pugnacious and engaging book.
(Monmouthsire County Life )This is also a compelling book - the story of the creation of the garden at the Veddw, interlaced with the author's somewhat bumpy education as a gardener. I read it from cover tocover in just a few sittings, agreeing with some parts, violently disagreeing with other parts but transfixed by the whole idea that someone who professes to hate gardening should spend their life creating a beautiful garden like the Veddw.
(Professional Gardener )Be prepared to be both entertained and annoyed when you read Anne's book as she describes her 'outside housework' and takes a swipe at 'gushing garden stories'. If her penned thoughts and criticisms make you think a little more reflectively about gardens - and gardeners - then her book will have acheived its aim.
(Reckless Gardener )Less bad tempered than a well considered plea to consider gardens more honestly and critically.
(Garden Design Journal )This book represents a gardener who is not so much bad-tempered as frustrated, at pains to challenge accepted garden wisdom in all its forms.
(House & Garden )Definitely thought-provoking.
(Irish Garden )This is certainly the first gardening book I've read in whch the author heartily recommends separate beds - for married couples, not vegetables.
(Daily Mail )A kind of grumpy, argumentative antidote to all other gardening books.
(Evening Standard )This book is refreshing for being resolutely contrarian. The author's searing honesty will earn instant respect from many readers - we have all felt like the chapter headed 'I hate gardening', but few of us admit it.
(The Garden )
About the Author
Anne Wareham has been living and gardening in the Welsh borders with her husband Charles Hawes for over thirty years. She has written occasional pieces for the Financial Times on gardens since 1998 and accompanying articles to Charles Hawes' photographs in magazines such as The English Garden and Gardens Illustrated. She contributed a chapter to the Frances Lincoln book Vista and is a founder member of thinkingardens, set up with the support of the RHS to encourage and develop a broader, more enquiring attitude to gardens.
Charles Hawes' photographs of gardens regularly appear in the best gardening magazines. He has won several prizes in the annual RHS open photography competition, and was an exhibiting finalist in the 2008 International Garden Photographer of the Year Competition. He supplied all the photographs in Stephen Anderton's recent book Discovering Welsh Gardens, shortlisted for a 2009 Garden Media Guild award.
Charles Hawes' photographs of gardens regularly appear in the best gardening magazines. He has won several prizes in the annual RHS open photography competition, and was an exhibiting finalist in the 2008 International Garden Photographer of the Year Competition. He supplied all the photographs in Stephen Anderton's recent book Discovering Welsh Gardens, shortlisted for a 2009 Garden Media Guild award.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
To do this book justice you need to read it at least twice. Why? Because the first time you'll probably be thinking, as I did, that this is yet another book about gardening, how to garden, what plants to plant where .... And you might just have, as I had, read a book by Carol Klein (who is anything but bad tempered!)
So on the first read, this may seem a bad book. But if you then accept that it's about gardeners rather than gardens (and by "gardeners" I mean not only those who get down and dig but also those who are fortunate enough to own big gardens and have the cash to pay someone else to do the heavy work for them), and read it again you'll get far more from it.
When other reviewers say this is a book about Anne Wareham's garden, they miss the point. The book uses the garden as a way to demonstrate the thinking that's the thrust of the book. There is no need to publicise the garden at all - it's only open on Sunday afternoons for three months of the year (inconsiderate!) and it seems that it's only open at all because the owner grudgingly accepts that some silly people want to visit it. The owner discourages you from wanting a garden tour by setting a stupid price for that. She probably doesn't want you there at all, disturbing her nap after a nice Sunday lunch.
This is, first and last, all about the mentality of those who spend days, weeks, years, developing a garden but never actually get to enjoy it. I'm like that. Every year I spend the spring preparing and making perfect and tell myself that in the summer (if we ever have one of those) I'll sit out there and enjoy it. When summer comes (on a single day in June), out goes the deck chair but on my way back for the bottle of wine I see a weed! That's it. Rest of day spend weeding, dead heading, pruning, tidying up. Next contact with deck chair is to put it away. This is what Anne is losing her temper about.
No, it's not like a Noddy book. There's no flow (let alone logical flow) after the first dozen or so pages. The book's a series of random thoughts, rants and raves. And it's more interesting and refreshing because of that (though a better editor might have made something of the order of the rants and picked up some of the contradictions).
So read it once and rubbish it by all means. But then read it twice and I think you'll get more from it. I read it a third time and after that read I added a star to my rating. And the photographs (by Charles Hawes) are worth buying the book for even if you don't read the words!
And you might just agree with me about the poor editing. There's a definite chink in the bad tempered armour on page 137 which any good editor would have removed.
So on the first read, this may seem a bad book. But if you then accept that it's about gardeners rather than gardens (and by "gardeners" I mean not only those who get down and dig but also those who are fortunate enough to own big gardens and have the cash to pay someone else to do the heavy work for them), and read it again you'll get far more from it.
When other reviewers say this is a book about Anne Wareham's garden, they miss the point. The book uses the garden as a way to demonstrate the thinking that's the thrust of the book. There is no need to publicise the garden at all - it's only open on Sunday afternoons for three months of the year (inconsiderate!) and it seems that it's only open at all because the owner grudgingly accepts that some silly people want to visit it. The owner discourages you from wanting a garden tour by setting a stupid price for that. She probably doesn't want you there at all, disturbing her nap after a nice Sunday lunch.
This is, first and last, all about the mentality of those who spend days, weeks, years, developing a garden but never actually get to enjoy it. I'm like that. Every year I spend the spring preparing and making perfect and tell myself that in the summer (if we ever have one of those) I'll sit out there and enjoy it. When summer comes (on a single day in June), out goes the deck chair but on my way back for the bottle of wine I see a weed! That's it. Rest of day spend weeding, dead heading, pruning, tidying up. Next contact with deck chair is to put it away. This is what Anne is losing her temper about.
No, it's not like a Noddy book. There's no flow (let alone logical flow) after the first dozen or so pages. The book's a series of random thoughts, rants and raves. And it's more interesting and refreshing because of that (though a better editor might have made something of the order of the rants and picked up some of the contradictions).
So read it once and rubbish it by all means. But then read it twice and I think you'll get more from it. I read it a third time and after that read I added a star to my rating. And the photographs (by Charles Hawes) are worth buying the book for even if you don't read the words!
And you might just agree with me about the poor editing. There's a definite chink in the bad tempered armour on page 137 which any good editor would have removed.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
By D E Barker
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This isn't the normal 'how to' gardening book. It is the story of how and why Anne Wareham's garden on the Welsh borders was set up. It's surprising for it's total lack of logical order---it is presented as a pugnaciously written series of vignettes or rambling rants, which attempt to explain why Ms Wareham has upset just about everyone in the established gardening world. Anne evidently hates gardening. She regards plants as weapons in the fight against bare soil. Animals are objects which drop into ponds. However, just as you start agreeing with her point of view, that today's gardening world is hopelessly twee and precious, she turns her verbal assault on all we new gardeners trying to preserve wildlife, green our environment, and grow our own produce. You just can't win with Anne! She is right and we are all wrong. The book is absorbing and thought provoking, making the reader question every aspect of their gardening life. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to set up a new garden and also to any established gardener looking for a book to make them sit up and think rather than boring them to tears (as, let's face it, most do...).
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
By D Moore
Format:Hardcover
For many years Anne Wareham has been raking through the muck of the garden world, challenging it's obsession with pretty plants, convinced instead that gardens are actually imbued with more importance than simply dirty fingernails and delightful dahlias. Such persistence has won friends and made enemies, as well as provided a basis for the issues raised in 'The Bad Tempered Gardener' which question many of the assumptions around the way we garden and why we do so.
Interweaving narrative strands run throughout the book, the central being the process of making her garden at Veddw in Monmouthshire with Charles Hawes. This learning curve with it's inherent confusions and contradictions has provoked meditations upon individuals, communities and the landscape, situating gardening activities within larger social and historical frameworks.
Critical reflections ponder the British national obsession for over planted gardens in relation to consumerism and the media. Indeed the media are castigated for their role in promoting glossy idealised notions of gardens divorced from their actual uses and surroundings. A side swipe is also aimed at the haughty-cultural hierarchy and it's supposed 'experts' dispensing words of wisdom from on high, which would have been interesting to see developed further.
Hortiphiliacs need not worry, there are plenty of chapters on plant likes and dislikes, presented from a personal perspective of gardening experiences. Here the book strays into more traditional garden territory, and as such these passages are sure raise the hackles of many plant obsessives.
Despite the serious issues raised it's not all heavy pondering. In fact the anecdotes about the making of the garden are the most entertaining reading on such an endeavour since Margery Fish's classic 'We Made a Garden' in 1956. Both providing fascinating insights into the dynamics of domestic partnerships and how they play out in the allocation of gardening tasks.
To readers with an investment in the status quo, the book may well prove to be irksome, which indeed is part of it's intention. But by asking more questions than it provides answers, it is on the whole far more reasonable than bad tempered, and refreshingly welcome for it!
Interweaving narrative strands run throughout the book, the central being the process of making her garden at Veddw in Monmouthshire with Charles Hawes. This learning curve with it's inherent confusions and contradictions has provoked meditations upon individuals, communities and the landscape, situating gardening activities within larger social and historical frameworks.
Critical reflections ponder the British national obsession for over planted gardens in relation to consumerism and the media. Indeed the media are castigated for their role in promoting glossy idealised notions of gardens divorced from their actual uses and surroundings. A side swipe is also aimed at the haughty-cultural hierarchy and it's supposed 'experts' dispensing words of wisdom from on high, which would have been interesting to see developed further.
Hortiphiliacs need not worry, there are plenty of chapters on plant likes and dislikes, presented from a personal perspective of gardening experiences. Here the book strays into more traditional garden territory, and as such these passages are sure raise the hackles of many plant obsessives.
Despite the serious issues raised it's not all heavy pondering. In fact the anecdotes about the making of the garden are the most entertaining reading on such an endeavour since Margery Fish's classic 'We Made a Garden' in 1956. Both providing fascinating insights into the dynamics of domestic partnerships and how they play out in the allocation of gardening tasks.
To readers with an investment in the status quo, the book may well prove to be irksome, which indeed is part of it's intention. But by asking more questions than it provides answers, it is on the whole far more reasonable than bad tempered, and refreshingly welcome for it!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
FOR ANYONE WHO HATES, LOATHES AND DESPISES GARDENING
The author is described as a psychotherapist (it's clear she's not a gardener) and the injunction which immediately springs to mind is "Psychotherapist, heal thyself ! Read more
Published 3 months ago by Jeff Walmsley
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Bad-Tempered Gardener (from a bad-tempered editor)
Anne Wareham's collected essays, filled with amusingly crotchety (but mostly witty and wise) commentary on gardens, gardeners, and their ilk, are a terrific antidote to too much... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Holy Hocks & Rocks
1.0 out of 5 stars
Gardener in search of an editor!
If ever there was a writer in urgent need of an editor there is one to be found within these pages! I had ordered up this book hoping to find a soul-mate in the battle against... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Bridget Bowen
3.0 out of 5 stars
Plant lovers only
I had expected a slightly more humourous take on the subject due to the title but having said that as a very keen plants person I enjoyed the book.
Published 4 months ago by storebee
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buy this book!
This is not a 'how to' book (thank the Lord!)If I was starting out in gardening, then this just HAS to be on my book shelf or 'wanted' list and, as I am a professional gardener and... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Gaynor Witchard
5.0 out of 5 stars
Terrific encouragement for all gardeners
What a wonderful detraction from the usual "How I Built a Garden" book. Anne Wareham gives us an alternative to the "must have" lists of fabulous plantings and says if what you... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Mick Read
4.0 out of 5 stars
An idiosynchratic view of gardening
I was given this book recently and, as an armchair gardener, I read it with a mixture of trepidation and interest. The trepidation was due to the title ... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Zoe Dawes
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved it
I loved The Bad Tempered Garden. I didn't always agree with Anne's views, but I found them honest and amusing. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Lesley Pearse
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bad Tempered Gardener
A good gardening friend and guru sent me this book and it is the best thing that has happened to me in ages! Read more
Published 19 months ago by Susan Mosse
5.0 out of 5 stars
A refreshing read
A refreshing read from an entertaining writer with an accessible style. Perfect Xmas gift for gardeners who already have the "how to" books.
Published 19 months ago by alyonushka
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