WALTHAMSTOW: Author reveals secrets behind unusual garden
3:41pm Tuesday 9th March 2010 in
A UNIQUE garden with more than 300 different plants is the subject of a new book illustrating how to grow beautiful and vivid wildlife on the smallest of plots.
Journalist and avid gardener Martyn Cox has for many years cultivated his garden, which is at the rear of an ordinary terraced house and measures just 30ft by 15ft.
Mr Cox's unique garden features more than 20 fruit trees, including grapes, kiwis, figs, pomegranates, apples, strawberries, apricots, redcurrants as well as 10 different types of chillies.
Mr Cox, a freelance journalist who writes gardening columns for a number of newspapers and magazines, has written a book explaining how to make the most of small gardens.
Entitled Big Gardens In Small Spaces, the book reveals some of the secrets of his success.
Mr Cox said: “People think that if you have a small garden there is not a lot you can do, but there is.”
The father-of-two uses imaginative ways of cramming as many plants as possible into his garden, including using windowsills and fences to grow plants and reducing space used for compost, water butts and storage.
Mr Cox's garden, at the back of his house in Brunswick Street, Walthamstow, features a small pond, and a curved path to wooden decking.
The path in the summer is completely covered by greenery.
He said: “My children love it, their friends generally don't have gardens like this one.”
The garden was opened to the public last year to raise money for charity.
Mr Cox said: “Around 260 people visited, and many of them said they would never have imagined someone could do this to such a small garden.”
Mr Cox said people don't have to spend lots of money to make the most of their gardens, and flowers grown from seeds, which can be bought for a pound a packet, will suffice.
He said: “Having a nice garden can improve the quality of your life significantly.”
Big Gardens In Small Places is available now, priced £18.99.
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Comments(10)
Walthamster
says...
4:54pm Tue 9 Mar 10
Walthamstow is crammed with creative people, artists, writers, musicians and so many others. If only we had a council that was proud of the place and its people - it could so easily be a showcase.
March Hare
says...
5:13pm Tue 9 Mar 10
Techno2
says...
5:16pm Tue 9 Mar 10
Tracey Melons
says...
11:25pm Tue 9 Mar 10
Martyn Cox
says...
8:52am Wed 10 Mar 10
Tracey Melons
says...
9:20am Wed 10 Mar 10
Martyn Cox wrote:Mistake in 3 sorry
Tracey, however good, useful or unique I think my book is, I wouldn't suggest anyone pays £318.99 for a copy of it. lol. If you search online you'll find it a much lower prices than the £18.99 jacket price. And my garden is open to raise money for charities supported by the National Gardens Scheme on 27 June, 11am-5.30pm
Where can I get one cheaper? Will you sign them? have you had a book signing? when is your next open day? Your colleague Mr honeydew was on telly the other day and those buckets bookshops selling his book for peanuts I don't know how they do it.
Give me one for a fiver signed and I will put it round the market where I work
Janet1
says...
12:09pm Wed 10 Mar 10
Unrealistically low book prices reduce our choice of books, because publishers no longer dare to take a risk on an interesting idea that may not sell in large numbers.
It also puts genuine book shops out of business as they can't compete. Once the supermarkets and similar bulk-buying firms have put small bookshops out of business, they don't have to bother with stocking a large range - just the bestsellers. And our choices are reduced still further.
It's great that Martyn's book is published and it sounds well worth the price. But I doubt if he himself gets them for £5. I've had 11 books published and I get 6 or 12 free copies each time, with the chance to buy more at a reduced rate, usually half price.
I've put 27 June in my diary. Looking forward to it!
Marcus Retief
says...
5:05pm Wed 10 Mar 10
Janet1 wrote:If you are correct which i do not think you are, why do they pay the Jordan woman money for old rope when she never writes anything and Tony Blair who only God knows how he fits it in amongst the speaking dates.
Tracey, the reason books can be sold below cost price is the same reason that supermarkets sell cheap food, by forcing down the price they pay suppliers until the suppliers have to either reduce their quality and range, or go bust. Many do go bust. Unrealistically low book prices reduce our choice of books, because publishers no longer dare to take a risk on an interesting idea that may not sell in large numbers. It also puts genuine book shops out of business as they can't compete. Once the supermarkets and similar bulk-buying firms have put small bookshops out of business, they don't have to bother with stocking a large range - just the bestsellers. And our choices are reduced still further. It's great that Martyn's book is published and it sounds well worth the price. But I doubt if he himself gets them for £5. I've had 11 books published and I get 6 or 12 free copies each time, with the chance to buy more at a reduced rate, usually half price. I've put 27 June in my diary. Looking forward to it!
This book seems a bit much in price. Ultimately if they give glossy mags out free it cannot be that much to produce?
Janet1
says...
5:51pm Wed 10 Mar 10
Glossy magazines can be given away free because they are financed by advertising. Look at all the full-page adverts -- the advertiser pays a lot of money to have those in a magazine or newspaper. If there weren't any the magazine would cost more than a book to buy, and no one would buy them.
Books by celebs, including Jordan's, are often best-sellers, which is why the publishers pay the celebs lots of money. It's a very simple commercial transaction -- the publishers don't imagine they're providing a service to world literature!
Celebs' books are very often ghost-written by professional authors. (It's good pay for the author, though depending on what the celeb is like to work with, it could drive you mad.)
It's a vicious circle, though. The celebs are paid huge advances, so the publisher then has to put all its publicity budget into pushing these celeb books, through PR events, special deals with bookshops etc. There's no money left to publicise or promote books, even excellent ones, by non-celeb authors. Therefore those books don't sell so well and therefore the publishers become less and less willing to publish them.
Result: loads of celeb books, and an ever-decreasing choice of anything else.
It doesn't always work. Sometimes the celeb book is so bad, or the celeb has become so unpopular by the time the book comes out, or people have so lost interest in them, that the book doesn't sell and the publisher loses a fortune. It would make sense to pay smaller advances to more authors, but the publishers are on the celeb treadmill. They are very frightened of breaking out of the herd and doing something original.
This isn't sour grapes on my part, by the way, as I've made money out of every book I've written! But not enough to live on by a long way, and like most authors I do other work to pay the bills.
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March Hare says...
4:07pm Tue 9 Mar 10