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Gardeners find weeds baffling and daunting. Here at last comes a practical guide which explains how weeds work and how best to deal with them.
Whenever he is gardening William Edmonds sees Charles Darwin as his mentor. Darwin was intrigued by the nature of variation in plants and how this related to which plants thrived and survived. From his minute observations we can understand how weeds can propagate and take over a garden.
Informed by Darwin's insights, and by over thirty years of gardening experience, William Edmonds describes and illustrates one hundred significant garden weeds, arranged in the order in which they have evolved. For each there is a What To Do and a further chapter sets out the pros and cons of twenty tried and tested approaches to weeding.
Learning to recognise, understand and deal with each weed will take you well on the way to coping in a relaxed – even enjoyable – tussle with these devilish despoilers. Weeds, Weeding (& Darwin) is an enlightening guidebook for every gardener.
William Edmonds is a former teacher who has been gardening professionally since 1998. Kiri Te Kanawa is among his clients. Apart from looking after his own classic cottage garden at Rodmell, Sussex, he has been managing the kitchen garden (now allotments) at Monk's House (the former home of the Woolfs and now a National Trust property) for the past thirty years and was for ten years the chairman of the RHS (Rodmell Horticultural Society). His wife is the children's book illustrator Celia Berridge.
"With this refreshing and well-informed guide, weeding has just become a lot more interesting."
- The Garden
"A sporadically rib-tickling page turner full of fascinating information [...] Buy this book and not only will your weed contraol techniques improve, but your dinner party conversation will veer off into hitherto uncharted territory."
- BBC Gardens Illustrated
"An amusingly written guide to combatting the 100 most common weeds."
- House & Garden
"Here at last comes a practical guide which explains how weeds work and how best to deal with them."
- Lynn News
"A jolly good weed [...] Useful as well as enjoyable."
- Lady
"This book is made for me; somebody understands my gardening anguish."
- Scotland on Sunday
