Down to Earth Gardening

Ann Turner is Financial and Budget Manager at the University of British
Columbia Library.

The Beastall name is a familiar one to gardeners in southwestern British Columbia. For 30 years, from 1950 until 1980, Jack and Hilda Beastall wrote a daily gardening column with a regional emphasis for the Victoria Daily Times. After their retirement, Joe Barber-Starkey volunteered to edit the mass of column material into a more permanent form of publication, and this practical handbook is the result.

The focus is both broad and narrow. It is broad in that the book covers the gamut of outdoor gardening topics, from flowers to fruit trees and from landscaping to cold frames, including even a section on greenhouse gardening. It is narrow in that it is strongly oriented toward the requirements of gardening in southwestern British Columbia, with its “semi-Mediterranean” climate and its frequently problematic clay and sandy soils. Gardeners in this area have long relied on another regionally oriented handbook, A.R. Willis’s The Pacific Gardener (Gray’s Publishing Ltd., 1st-7th eds., 1964-1975). The Beastall publication is complementary to this one, rather than a substitute for it. The Pacific Gardener is encyclopedic in its approach, with short descriptive passages, numerous tables, and comprehensive listings of plants. Down to Earth Gardening is more chattily informative, full of helpful hints and detailed description but less comprehensive in its inclusion of all plants that may be grown in the region. For example, The Pacific Gardener gives some general information about growing Antirrhinum (Snapdragons), along with similar information for 39 other common annuals. The Beastalls give details of 13 specific varieties of this old favourite, but include only 22 other annuals. Both publications include gardening calendars, but the Beastalls’ weekly guide is more detailed than The Pacific Gardener’s monthly plan. Both books are well indexed. Gardeners from other regions will find much that is helpful in Down to Earth Gardening. The coverage of such topics as propagation and pruning techniques, landscaping principles, and greenhouse maintenance is as relevant in Newfoundland as it is in British Columbia. But these gardeners must bear in mind that the named varieties, the planting dates, and particularly the gardening calendar may well be inappropriate for their own regions.