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Reading Material In English?
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Spedito da Viqar Treviso /USDA 8 (viqarqadir@hotmail.com) il 20/05/05 - 5:58
| Ciao Tutti!
I'm new to Italy and have yet to learn the language. Is there any place where I can find books specific to Italian Gardening (north, Veneto) in English Language? I need some reference books and perhaps a horticultural encyclopedia. Books and Magazines won't hurt either.
Thanks
Viqar |
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RE: Reading Material In English?
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I'll soon be in your boat as I'm moving to Italy in August. I can read Italian though. But that doesn't help as I've so far found that most Italian info is geared to pre-amateurs. The Italian gardening friends that I've made on the last couple of visits all have big libraries of English books and magazines, mostly British.
Try www.mediterraneangardensociety.com and dance a jig if the site comes up, it seems to be hit and miss for me.
I've been promised to be taken around the Veneto region to see garden and nurseries when I return. From what I've seen so far, the offer fills me with curious apprehension. |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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Good pointers, thanks.
I don't know if I am any better than pre-amateur myself :)
Back in Pakistan I was in the moonsoon belt, with a totally different type of flora. I did however, have the benefit of easy access to liberaries and English language references. Not to mention the readily available of my father who is a botanist. Here I find myself spending hours just to identify a common tree. So the idea is to find some good British books to create a small library and then build on it. Would you know of some? I know the Island you mentioned in your profile. I think it's beautiful. It's climate is indeed tropical...slightly different from where I live in treviso (only 30 km away). It's closer to the alps and sometimes gets frost for upto a week annually. A good benchmark would be that you can't grow Hoya outside. Thanks for the link again and I look forward to another English speaking gardener in the region. |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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| If that link doesn't work, then www.mediterraneangardensociety.org might. I'm not sure I would call Torcello anything close to tropical, but being sealevel right near the ocean should moderate the climate. neighbours do have some palm trees that seed them selves, but then palm trees seed themselves in the italian alps by lago maggiore, and figs too. I'm quite excited to start a new garden on the island. The Gardener's Encyclopedia Of Plants and Flowers
ISBN 0-88850-245-1, Doring kindersley Publishers Ltd
This is a good English reference book to start with. It shows flowers by color and season. |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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| Correction there, I meant Mediterranian, not tropical :) I was able to get into the site you mentioned and had a look around. It's a useful site and I think I'll be visiting often in the future. The book you have mentioned is already on my wishlist. I wonder how it compares with the two volume set "A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants" from RHS. At this point I am more inclined towards the RHS book. Torcello and several of the other Islands close to it are perfect for gardens. The climate is mild and you often don't have to deal with the snow that may fall just 30 km inland. In the recent years we have seen some heavy snow fall by Venice standards. My office is in Marghera which is 2 km out of Venice and I've noticed the last couplde of times when it was snowing in Marghera, Venice itself was not recieving any snow. |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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The islands got 30cm of snow this past winter, the beginning of march, but it disappeared quickly.
I think the two books are basically the same. I've seen the RHS book and not bought it cuz of the similarity. |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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I just ordered it. Amazon.co.uk should get a nobel prize for helping out us poor non natives in Italy.
You ever play around with dahlias? |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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I have yet to come to liking dahlias. I don't hate them anymore. But still have not got to a neutral point either.
They just don't look "natural" in a garden to me. |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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:)
That's funny. I think I had a similar feeling about vinca. But seriously I think I am probably too unseasoned to have pronounced dislikes yet.
I love anything gaudy and big...things that would put off even the most indifferent people :)A point in case is the Cardiocrinum I have planned to put as a centerpiece in the main postion of the lawn. The joys of ignorance.
I got the RHS encyclopedia by the way. They lost the order first time around and resent it so it took a while. Among the handsomest books I've seen and very useful, too bulky to carry around though, two big volumes. I was so impressed I also ordered the rhs encyclopedia of gardening.
The house reconstruction is coming along fine but the garden looks more and more bruised every day. I hope I can restore the soil health without any major intervention after the contractors are done with their heavy machinery and cement mixers. Wish me luck. |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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Don here again. New profile. It should be no problem restoring the soil. And plants bounce back from bruising. This year especially with all the rain we've been having Aug and Sept.
I'm now working on my garden. The 100m canal bank is being cleared and lasagna'd with whatever rottable stuff I can find. I'm hoping to get some bulbs in soon for inspiration next spring when I start planting.
Do a search here on Lasagna gardening. Easy and great for the soil. |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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| American expat in Bologna here--I agree, lasagna gardening is the way to go! I'm also going to try some Square Foot Gardening this year. There are some lovely Italian gardening magazines, but that doesn't help if you don't speak the language. :) For books, I get all mine through Amazon.co.uk or when I go back to the US to visit my folks. Benvenuto! |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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| Hello Don and Jane It's been a hectic fall with anything but the garden in focus. I moved into the place now that it's habitable and my work has been pretty hectic as well with one project after another reaching the deadlines. When we moved in we discovered the house itself was too small for all the things we're used to, so I asked the builders to prepare a raised concrete platform at the end of the long arm of the L shaped garden. Unfortunately that place was supposed to be the veggie garden. So I've decided to trim my aspiration of planting 5 raised beds of veggies to 2. The front needs some serious levelling after the tree stumps were pulled out and where it was dug to put in the water main and sanitation and other similar stuff. I contacted a nurseryman and reached an agreement that he would come with a small caterpillar and a couple of trucks of soil and put everything right. He never appeared and after hundreds of calls I suspect he's changed his number :) That was back in november. Now the ground is frozen over and you can't do much else but wait for the spring. Which sets me back one year. as far as tree and shrub planting goes. I had also planned some double trellis work (green walls) around the perimiter instead of the normal fences and that will also have to wait until the ground is level and I can plant the climbers (mostly clematis armandii and passiflora). I am leaving for Pakistan for about three weeks (my brother is finally getting married) and hopefully when I get back, my ginko bilboa and wistaria cinesis alba seeds will be ready to take out of the stratification tubs and put out to germinate at room temprature. I am very interested in the lasagna gardening as described here. I am a little skeptical about rotting or rottable material around bulbs though. Let me know your thoughts. Regards to both of you Viqar |
RE: Reading Material In English?
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| Hello folks. Odd that the Italian site is filled with exchanges in English, but there it is. I'm an American living in Italy since 2000, in the hills in the province of Piacenza since 2002 and working since then on my big garden. I want to get involved in the dialog I find here, since I know few gardeners in Italy. I've just skimmed this site so don't have all the details of the garden experiences of the participants, but will catch up in time. We bought an old farm and have been improving land and buildings and building a garden, or better, gardens, ever since. We're at 1500 ft. (450 m.), facing south, and have a fairly warm spot for the zone, sufficiently so that I'm experimenting with olive trees, for example (sufficiently so that we have scorpions). We have heavy clay soil over rocks, mild winters, but with enough cold that we can grow plants like apples and lilacs, and dry summers. I love almost everything that grows, but my chief interest is roses, which do extremely well here (once you amend the ground sufficiently). What on earth is lasagna gardening? My favorite general reference in English is 'The Sunset Western Garden Book', written for the western United States. It has its own system for designating gardening zones which goes well beyond the USDA climate zones. It's a good basic book for Italy because it covers gardening in California, which has areas of Mediterranean-type climate and of course mild marine-influenced zones. I know Italian, and after years of reading about gardening have a good horticultural vocabulary. I find the literature on plants and gardening in Italian to be fairly sparse, though I have a couple of useful references on native plants. The most interesting reading matter I've found in Italian is the magazines. I'm particularly interested in exchanging plants and propagating material. I have a lot of roses, many of which can be easily grown from cuttings, lots of other plants as well. And I certainly would like to make the acquaintance of other gardeners in Italy: we are a rather lonely minority in this country, or at least that's the sense I get. Possibly I haven't found my fellow enthusiasts yet. Happy New Year to you all, and good gardening! |
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