Gardeners

A Guide For

In The Tropics

Are you troubled by hippo

potami, monkeys or antelopes

in your garden? Probably not, if you live on a South Pacific

island. Nonetheless, gardeners

there will have many of the problems and many of the

pleasures described by Dr.

Arthur Thomas in Gardening in Hot Countries.

MUCH of the author’s own ex perience of tropical gardening was in East Africa where conditions shade back from the hot wetness of the coastal regions to the cool and dry plateaus and highlands.

Most of the variations have their counterparts in the Pacific, from the semi-arid atoll to the lushness of the equatorial rain forest or the High lands of New Guinea.

Only in the matter of pests is there any great difference. If you garden in New Guinea you won’t have to dig a two-feet-wide, 18-inch deep trench to keep out a hippo potamus (but you may have trouble with the giant snails that are a legacy of the war with Japan).

There is a chapter on climates and soils of hot countries and what you can do to improve the latter, if not the former. Trees and shrubs for

hot wet, hot dry, hill stations and beach sites are listed and described.

There is a chapter on pot plants and ferns and another on orchids.

For people who like to eat what they grow, there is a lot of com monsense advice on producing local fruits and another on vegetable growing—both suitable “European” varieties and those indigenous to the tropics.

There are over 50 pages of pic tures that show what can be done in hot country gardens if you pul your mind to it, most of them taker by the author in Africa or on visits to India, Malaya, Spain and else where.

For keen gardeners just setting out for a new life in the tropics this book would be invaluable. Foi gardeners who have already spenl most of their lives there, it still con tains a wealth of information and is worthy of a place on the bookshelf It distinctly is not a book foi expatriates who pine to create ar English country garden in the midst of a tropical rain forest; or whc have ambitions to grow a plum tree on an equatorial atoll.

It will show you, however, how best to adapt your urge for a garder to your environment; how best tc settle for hibiscus when you have been raised to Scottish bluebells; 01 for chinese-cabbage instead of brus

sels-sprouts.

JT.

(Gardening In Hot Countries

Faber & Faber. 30/- Stg.)

O Unless otherwise stated, ah prices quoted in this section are ir Australian currency.