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The Natural History Of The Garden
The Natural History of the Garden
Unknown Binding
About the author
Michael Chinery
260 books10 followersMichael Chinery is an English naturalist.
He studied in Cambridge where he graduated in natural sciences and anthropology.
He edits Cecidology, the journal of the British Plant Gall Society.
Books:
- Animals in the zoo,
- Animal communities,
- Britain's Plant Galls. A photographic
guide (2011) WildGuides. Old Basing, Hampshire. ISBN 978 190365743 0
- Purnell's concise Encyclopedia of Nature,
Forests, Kingfisher, London, 1992 ISBN 0-86272-915-7
Chinery is well known for his books on insects :
Insects of Britain and Northern Europe, 3rd edition, Collins field guide. ISBN 0-00-219918-1
Insects of Britain and Western Europe, Collins Guide, 1986 (reprinted in 1991)
Butterflies of Britain and Europe, Collins Wildlife Trust Guides.
He studied in Cambridge where he graduated in natural sciences and anthropology.
He edits Cecidology, the journal of the British Plant Gall Society.
Books:
- Animals in the zoo,
- Animal communities,
- Britain's Plant Galls. A photographic
guide (2011) WildGuides. Old Basing, Hampshire. ISBN 978 190365743 0
- Purnell's concise Encyclopedia of Nature,
Forests, Kingfisher, London, 1992 ISBN 0-86272-915-7
Chinery is well known for his books on insects :
Insects of Britain and Northern Europe, 3rd edition, Collins field guide. ISBN 0-00-219918-1
Insects of Britain and Western Europe, Collins Guide, 1986 (reprinted in 1991)
Butterflies of Britain and Europe, Collins Wildlife Trust Guides.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 19, 2022
One thing about the pandemic and the isolation - it has lent itself to getting volumes down that have long lingered on the shelves. In this case, fellow readers, I confess: we bought this book in 1977, and it has been lovingly packed up and moved house five times without ever being read (apart from the odd dip to look at the colour plates when identifying slugs)!
We’ve had a garden, wherever we’ve lived, but in the last two years we’ve been working hard on making a wildlife pond, planting bird-friendly hedges and lots of native shrubs and perennials. It seemed like a good time then to gen up on the natural history of the garden.
Michael Chinery’s warm, avuncular voice reminds me of my favourite teachers at school - ever ready with a welcome humorous anecdote, but also deeply learned in their subject.
I found this a fascinating read. There are chapters on A Place to Live, Weeds and Other Plant Guests, The World of the Worm, Snails and Slugs, Woodlice Centipedes and Millipedes, The Insect Hordes, The Spiders and their Allies, Birds of the Garden, Garden Mammals and The Wildlife Gardener.
These quotes are just a few of my favourite things (channelling one of my most loved films here, guess which!):
- Hooked and sticky fruits and seeds cling to human clothing just as easily as they do the animal fur, and one often carries home an assortment of ‘burrs’ attached to socks and trousers after a country walk. Trouser turn-ups, now happily out of fashion, also collect numerous loose seeds, and Sir Edward Salisbury, a leading authority on weeds and alien plants, once raised more than 300 plants from the debris taken from his turn-ups.
- Gilbert White wrote in 1777 ‘ ... men would find that the earth without worms would soon become cold, hardbound, and void of fermentation, and consequently sterile...’
-The hedgehog’s courtship is quite a public affair, fascinating to watch and also to listen to ... I remember one particularly noisy performance which woke several of my neighbours. Windows were opened one by one and the hedgehogs had quite an audience on that warm August night.
I can attest to the veracity of that last one - we had two hedgehogs under our apple trees when we lived in East Sussex, and I heard them going at it “hot and heavy” one summer’s evening when I was on slug patrol round the vegetable patch!
We’ve had a garden, wherever we’ve lived, but in the last two years we’ve been working hard on making a wildlife pond, planting bird-friendly hedges and lots of native shrubs and perennials. It seemed like a good time then to gen up on the natural history of the garden.
Michael Chinery’s warm, avuncular voice reminds me of my favourite teachers at school - ever ready with a welcome humorous anecdote, but also deeply learned in their subject.
I found this a fascinating read. There are chapters on A Place to Live, Weeds and Other Plant Guests, The World of the Worm, Snails and Slugs, Woodlice Centipedes and Millipedes, The Insect Hordes, The Spiders and their Allies, Birds of the Garden, Garden Mammals and The Wildlife Gardener.
These quotes are just a few of my favourite things (channelling one of my most loved films here, guess which!):
- Hooked and sticky fruits and seeds cling to human clothing just as easily as they do the animal fur, and one often carries home an assortment of ‘burrs’ attached to socks and trousers after a country walk. Trouser turn-ups, now happily out of fashion, also collect numerous loose seeds, and Sir Edward Salisbury, a leading authority on weeds and alien plants, once raised more than 300 plants from the debris taken from his turn-ups.
- Gilbert White wrote in 1777 ‘ ... men would find that the earth without worms would soon become cold, hardbound, and void of fermentation, and consequently sterile...’
-The hedgehog’s courtship is quite a public affair, fascinating to watch and also to listen to ... I remember one particularly noisy performance which woke several of my neighbours. Windows were opened one by one and the hedgehogs had quite an audience on that warm August night.
I can attest to the veracity of that last one - we had two hedgehogs under our apple trees when we lived in East Sussex, and I heard them going at it “hot and heavy” one summer’s evening when I was on slug patrol round the vegetable patch!
September 4, 2022
A much-loved book which my children and I share to find out about all we see outside. The style is serene and easy to read, the colour plates make creatures and plants easy to identify....This is a perfect family book but also would be nice for a bookshelf in any school, primary or secondary. Caring for small critters like earthworms, moths and snails has never been so important, and hearing about their life- habits is very absorbing and entertaining...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews