By recounting the history of the Veitch family nursery, Shephard (Pickled, Potted and Canned) tells the story of the heyday of English gardening. Veitch & Sons had its foundations in the late 18th century, when the fashion for naturalistic plantings of ornamental trees led one landscape designer to shoot seed by cannon onto an inaccessible crag and tertilize plants with "imported human bones." Over the next 140 years, the nursery flourished under five Veitch generations, dominating the trade and making major contributions to the practice and science of horticulture. The Veitches spotted the commercial potential for exotics and became leaders in plant collecting and hybridization, introducing many varieties that remain garden staples. Their extensive activity over the time period Shephard covers is too much to tell well; the narrative becomes a recitation of facts. Readers are deprived of any but an occasional glimpse of the daily detail or personal perspective that breathes life into history (although a color insert and black and white plates throughout add some depth). This is particularly unfortunate in the chapters devoted to the plant collectors themselves. Those adventures beg for more than a single sentence reporting travel "by boat and on buffalo" in Borneo, joining "a royal pig hunt" on the Sulu islands and collecting "several beautiful new orchids, new ferns and rare mosses." Shephard may have packed too much information into one book, but she also leaves readers wanting to learn more. In that, she does her remarkable subject and her readers justice. (June)
