SUCH BEAUTY! Should that exclamation sound overly-theatrical, perhaps even a shade Victorian in our age of slick sound bites, then simply open at random any page of The Wild Garden Plants of Ireland, a glorious new book from the always excellent Thames and Hudson, featuring the knowledge and anecdotal flair of botanist Charles Nelson and the sublime genius of botanical artist Wendy Walsh.
Now that it is officially spring, regardless of the vicious wind and capricious temperature drops, this wonderful collection of more than 100 plants, native and ex-pat, will inspire excursions into the fields, woodlands and hedge banks to contemplate the self-possessed yellow primrose, Primula vulgaris.
Divided into 33 sub-sections, such as Chinese Collections, featuring Rubus lasiostylus, and Augustine Henry, the great Scots-born plant collector who contributed so much to western flora by introducing marvels such as Lilium henryi, a lily he discovered in the river gorges in central China. It was Henry who encouraged a professional collector to go to China and collect the Davidia involucrate, the dove or handkerchief tree, which has been cultivated in Ireland since 1903.
The illustrations, which are new versions of the portraits Wendy Walsh executed for the monumental An Irish Florilegium, originally published in two volumes in 1983 and 1987 – the first volume of which was recently reissued – are magnificent.
It is impossible to select favourites, still, the harebell, Campanula rotundifolia, will delight with its delicate robustness, as does Rosa X hibernica, the glorious hybrid cultivated by John Templeton (1766-1825).
It is exciting to note the inclusion of North American blue-eyed grass, a relative of the iris, while the pitcherplant, now naturalised in bogs in several counties, was first introduced from North America and planted in Co Offaly circa 1884. If ever a book could lift the spirits it is this one.
