Bulletin - Summer 1979 - North American Rock Garden Society

MANUAL OF ALPINEPLANTSby Will Ingwersen V.M.H. 1978,Ingwersen and Dunnsprint, Ltd., EastGrinstead, W. Sussex, England, $20.00.Available in U.S.A. and Canada fromHHH Horticultural, Hightstown, NJ.Here is an eccentric and interestingvolume about rock garden plants. Theauthor, Will Ingwersen, has a nameto conjure with not only in his ownEnglish countryside, but here inAmerica where he has visited and lectured.His credentials are impeccable.Will Ingwersen has spent a rich andfull life associated with Birch FarmNursery in West Sussex, England, anursery of world-renown founded byhis father, Walter, just over fifty yearsago.Will's father was a giant in all theearly days of alpine gardening inEngland. His nursery and its catalogswere the source — the well spring.He was not only a tireless figure inthe day to day running of the famednursery, but he was an informed andavid explorer for plants. His fascicledsupplements to the nursery catalogs,genus by genus, and his columns inthe pages of the old Gardener s Chroniclewere models of scholarship and horticulturalwriting.On the 50th Anniversary of thefounding of Birch Farm, his son, Will,was quite naturally moved to commemoratethe occasion by a specialpublication. I am sure he had beenurged more than once to write a bookbased on his long experience with rockgarden plants.Periodically, in England as otherwherealso, there is a demand for anupdate on all recent introductions intothe rock garden plant world. SampsonClay in 1954 in The Present Day RockGarden updated Farrer's work, correctingsome slips in Farrer and addinga vast number of items to the catalogof possible rock garden plants. Hiswork ran to almost seven hundred pagesof close packed text, a monumentalwork based largely on compilation ofall the up-to-date botanical literature.He corrected some Farrer errors andclassified and described hundreds ofplants not mentioned in Farrer. Manyhe apparently grew, most he abstractedfrom literature. It remains a valuablereference work. Of course in the daysof Clay's book, publishing was a differentmatter from what it is today.It is very possible, yet I have noway of knowing, that Will Ingwersenwas persuaded by his admirers andeven by a potential publisher to doa full scale update of the Farrer-Claysequence. Things have been going onin the way of exploration and introductionsince those days. We do need anupdate. The information is containedin various publications to which most139