Book Review: The Pottery Gardener by Arthur Parkinson

Since it’s winter, we have had some time to catch up on reading - both new releases as well as re-reading some of our favorite gardening books.

One of my favorite books has been Arthur Parkinson’s ‘The Pottery Gardener’. If you’re not aware of Arthur Parkinson, he is a young British gardener whose love of gardening, fancy chickens, use of dust bins as planters, cut flowers, adorable sketches and constant references to ‘Absolutely Fabulous’ make him quite endearing and interesting.

Named one of the most influential young UK gardeners by Architectural Digest, Arthur trained at the Royal Botanical Gardens before working for Sarah Raven at Perch Hill, and then became the head gardener at Emma Bridgewater Factory gardens. His ability to grow gorgeous, deeply colored gardens in raised beds and planters is unrivaled in their charm and beauty, and the casual ease by which he talks about his method of gardener is sure to charm you.

This book is about Arthur’s childhood growing up and being drawn towards gardening and chickens from a very early age, including the influential women in his life (including his grandmother and the Duchess of Devonshire and expert gardener Sarah Raven) and his journey to the Emma Bridgewater Factory where he now gardens alongside his beautiful chickens in gardens packed full of blooms for bees and butterflies that an absolute riot of color (I like the term he uses to describe his color scheme as ‘Venetian’ - how perfectly does that summarize the spectrum of colors?)

One of the things that I love about Arthur’s planting style is the profusion of jewel-toned flowers - rarely seen these days in such concentration and combination. Dustbin planters full of brightly colored tulips, magenta-flowering wallflowers, purple alliums and cranberry colored Double Click cosmos are like bright explosions of colors in what would be an otherwise rather drab and grey surrounding.

Perhaps it’s because of our experience with lower farming and growing that we’ve had a preoccupation with the light muted colors so popular with wedding florals (think the blush tones of ‘Cafe au Lait’ dahlias and phlox ‘Cherry Caramel’). Indeed, the growing of bold, saturated colors seems almost sacrilegious to include in the lineup. However, Arthur has convinced us that the addition of bright and bold colors is absolutely necessary for a colorful and beautiful garden, and the punchy deep colors are so beautiful that they scarcely seem to need supporting foliage or secondary flowers when arranging with them or in their plantings.

You also can’t also talk about Arthur Parkinson without his chickens either. His fluffy, feathery companions are some of the most fabulous birds I have ever seen - many of them the most delightful Cochins, Frizzles and other fancy poultry that appear more in the manner of small toy dogs or fancy cats than mere livestock. Indeed, another one of Arthur’s most wonderful traits is his ability to deeply, passionately love living things, both plants and animals, even those that aren’t under his care directly.

One of the most important gardening points I took away from The Pottery Garden was the idea that you don’t need a lot of space in order to have a beautiful, colorful garden. Indeed, you can grow quite a few flowers in a few containers - enough to cut and enjoy inside as well as provide color and interest in your garden and feed the bees and pollinating wildlife.

After seeing so many images of decidedly American and decidedly agricultural rows of flowers being grown like soldiers, lined up neatly one after the other in solid blocks organized by color and variety, it’s wonderful to see what is an actual flower garden - one that highlights the natural exuberance of these plants spilling over onto each other, blooming abundantly with the primary focus being to feed pollinators and provide color in the garden instead of being obsessed with harvesting the stems (as is usually the case with flower farmers). Neither way is more correct or less correct, but they are decidedly different and after having grown flowers professionally for so many years I think we can (as growers) forget that there are ways to enjoy flowers more than in long and straight rows!

The flower and plant combinations are absolutely dazzling both in visual appearance as well as plant combinations. For instance, Arthur starts off with mixed planters of violas and scented wallflowers and artichokes in the spring, followed by an explosion of tulips and other brightly colored bulbs that erupt from a “bulb lasagne” (bulbs planted in layers so that they can bloom in succession). After spring is over, the bulbs and spring annuals are replaced with brightly colored cosmos ‘Dazzler’, purple spray millet, frosted explosion grass, brightly colored dahlias such as ‘Totally Tangerine’ and black eyed susan vine.

Although our galvanized containers are unfortunately not quite as charming as the dustbins that Arthur grows in, we have adapted to growing in containers for our patio garden. Because we are in such a hot and dry environment, there are a lot of colorful annuals that we love to grow that unfortunately do very poorly when planted in the ground. In our Mediterranean summers, the only way to grow plants like dahlias and cosmos and salvias properly is to grow the in containers where we can water them by hand and keep them well tended. This past year we planted our containers full of dark, bold-colored flowers of Salvia ‘Amistad’, Salvia ‘Lighthouse Purple’ Dahlia ‘Bishop’s Children’, and Ipomea ‘Blackie’ to create deeply saturated jewel-toned vignettes that were a delight to behold, and contributed greatly towards making our back patio area into an oasis of color and scent and entertainment (the hummingbirds loved the salvias in particular!).

Indeed, Arthur is seemingly a wizard who is able to transform what would be very industrial, urban environments and create romantic, colorful, dreamy gardens even without being able to plant into the ground. The fact that he has chickens and ducks running around, pecking at the gravel walkways and occasionally going after the bit of vegetation that strays too far over the edge of a planter only adds to the magic of the spell he casts.

I am interested to see what Arthur does in the future - he truly has a brilliant mind when it comes to color and texture and his passion for growing and plants and flowers is infectious - and I think that he is going to do great things when it comes to leading and shaping the way gardening looks in the future. In fact, he is going to be publishing his second book The Flower Yard in April of 2021 and we can’t wait!

You can purchase a copy of The Pottery Gardener on Amazon, and you can follow Arthur on his Instagram @arthurparkinson_