[.ca] The New Exotic Garden (ISBN 1840006927)

From Amazon.co.uk:
Will Giles reckons that British gardeners are ready to abandon the restrained good taste, subtle border plantings and generally muted palette of the traditional garden in favour of tropical boldness, hot colours and sculptural forms. He may well be right. The various plantings he discusses and illustrates in The New Exotic Garden are extravagant indeed. Huge banana trees, bamboos of all sizes and colours, ferns, gingers, astonishing foliage plants, shrubs like the fabulous Brugmansia, are mingled with familiar exotics like begonias, hostas, clematis and dahlias, made unfamiliar again by their context. This is a very exciting approach to garden-building; and if your tastes lie in the direction of this kind of febrile self-expression, The New Exotic Garden is highly recommended. It includes a directory of exotic plants and practical advice on their cultivation. No-one could pretend, however, that these are low-maintenance plants. Many have to be protected from frost: there are illustrations of the fairly awe-inspiring precautions required to ensure the survival of a mature banana plant (build a kind of wooden cage out of pallets around it and stuff it with straw), and the more manageable plants may need to be transferred to a greenhouse for the winter. All of this means that a full-blown exotic garden is not to be undertaken lightly. But the rewards, as Will Giles triumphantly demonstrates in the many beautiful shots of his own Norwich garden among the illustrations, can be immense. --Robin Davidson

Lee's 'review'.:
A very colourful book,quite similar to Richard Iversen's 'The Exotic Garden',except it's British.Ideal for the novice into exotic gardening,but doesn't really give any advanced info for established exoctists.I don't agree with what Will says about certain plants and their requirments,like eg.Cordyline australis needs to be brought indoors in winter for protection.It's a hardy plant in most of the UK(95%).I wish he would tell us more about growing cold hardy cacti and succulents outdoors all year round as he lives in a 'semi-arid' region of Britain.