Book Review: “Urban Flowers” by Carolyn Dunster

Tuesday, 28 March 2017

In recent years there has been a lot of focus on urban gardening and creating gardens whatever space you have. From rooftop terraces to vertical gardens there are always ways to create wonderful gardens wherever you are. In our last blog, “Small Garden, Big Ideas” we shared our top tips for urban gardening. In our latest blog we review some urban flower tips from Carolyn Dunster in her new book “Urban Flowers”…

This book is crammed full of wonderful photography by Jason Ingram and is full of inspiration for adding flowers to your urban garden. Who knew that a plastic washing up bowl could be a gorgeous planter? And there are some lovely tips to make your drain pipe look a lot more interesting.

If you are looking to completely overhaul your space, Carolyn gives lots of tips on how measure your space, plan your garden and things to consider. She explains all sorts of gardening including container planting, vertical planting and showcases lots of different styles.

There are pages crammed full of different colour palettes to help you make a cohesive display through planting. She also touches on the importance of trees and why they should be a consideration in gardens.

To further your skills, there are sections on how to grow plants from seeds and bulbs as well as considering scented or therapeutic plants in your garden. There are even some recipes tucked at the back to take your garden flowers to a new level!

Whatever your skill level and garden knowledge there will be something useful to take from this book. It is easy to flick through and pick out bits of interest and it’s the sort of book you will return to again and again for inspiration.

If you are interested in gardens and dabbling a bit more then this book should be on your reading list. And as it happens, we have one to give away. Just fill out the form below and we will pick a winner on 18th April 2017. Good luck!

Urban Flowers is published by the lovely people at Frances Lincoln and is available in hardback for £20 from 6th April 2017.

All at Vialii