Pre-Covid I was looking for material for a post on Winifred Walker, the botanical artist and discovered that one of the companies who commissioned her flower paintings was Ryders of St Albans. That name sounded familiar but didn’t ring any horticultural bells so I set off down a side-track to see what was known about them too. It was well worth the detour.
Looking back it’s a pity that my brother, a super-keen golfer, wasn’t with me because he’d have told me immediately why the name Ryder was familiar. I decided to leace reporting what I found until the next time the other Ryder Cup happened which apparently it did last week….
“There are a number of ways of laying out a garden. The best is by taking on a gardener.” So opens a delightful book on gardens by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. Published in Prague in 1929 with illustrations by his brother Josef, it was first translated into English in 1931.
Normally gardening books from that era are, let’s be honest, worthy but dull, good for a bit of period feel, quaint photos or funny adverts but otherwise not much use and cratinly not widely read any more. The Gardener’s Year is different. It is both timely and timeless and worth reading every word, and smiling at every drawing.
The Garden History Blog 
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