Wiley is clearly a passionate person about gardening and knows more about his topic than almost anyone. His personal expertise on the topic of planting under canopies, in forested areas, and in woodlands make this more of an adventure story combined with the methods behind an unusual form of gardening. States the author, "for many of, woods and trees evoke a powerful, often deeply subconscious, emotional response," one that Wiley's writing helps stir as well.
Wiley writes, "a garden created below or among trees taps into these deep emotions to provide an uplifting and also gently protective experience that gardens without trees can never acheive." Wiley describes his first post, as head gardener at Garden House in the UK, where he established a nursery and threw himself into learning the special differences between woodland plants, their limitations and potential. It became clear to Wiley that each plant required special techniques and growing conditions and that studying them thriving in nature would provide much information. He has now been a woodland gardener for over 40 years and as a result the pages of this book are dense with information.
The author begins by emphasizing site assessment, not only how shady is your site, but what tree cover is providing the shade. "The light beneath the deciduous canopy is constantly changing, not just through different seasons but also through the hours of each day."
In his first experimental nursery, he used woody plants to provide understory for other plants, although he also added fast-growing birch trees, so that there can be layers upon layers. Layering is a major theme of his next chapter, The Woodlanders, which talks about bulbs, perennials and perennial growing habits, and a discussion of the almost limitless choices of woodland plants. In the chapter Creating a Woodland Garden, good self-seeders are listed and the process for preparing an existing woodland is discussed. There is a section titled, "creating miniture woodlands," that is extremely inspiring and based on his own projects with this work. Following this, Special Situations, covers a wide variety of challenges, including soil and limited space, and includes instructions for care as well as instructions and maps for creating a woodland border.
The second half of the book is considered the plant directory, but it has so much text next to each species, including the authors own commentary on times he has encorporated this species into a space and how it performed. In describing the various flowering dogwood types and how they respond to different soils and placements, the author in concluding his dogwood section which is rich with detail and information on over a dozen types, writes, "in truth there are now so many flowering dogwood varieties, if I had space I would probably attempt to grow them all."
The next section, Woodland Perrenials, is by far the largest section of the book, taking up nearly a third of the entire volume. and is as detail-dense a gift as the previous section. The last two sections, Bulbs, Corms and Tubers and Ferns, Grasses and Grass-Like Plants are also highly readable in this way, making the book a complete gem to anyone versed or newly interested in this important topic.
The plant directory half of the book includes zones and areas plants are native to, so that although it is a UK writer, he is well-travelled and has sought out understory plants in their native settings in order to study them before writing about them here, introducing much botany with any gardening directions with his vigour.
I highly reccommend this book to anyone at any level of gardening interest as reading it will enrich your knowledge enormously and give you tools to set out on your own exploration and hopefully gardening of the beautiful plants that thrive on the shady forest floor.
Wiley, K. (2015). Designing and planting a woodland garden: Plants and combinations that thrive in the shade. Timber Press.
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