Ingram David S. - Science and the garden: the scientific basis of horticultural practice

The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK's leading gardening charity dedicated to advancing horticulture and promoting good gardening. Its charitable work includes providing expert advice and information, training the next generation of gardeners, creating hands-on opportunities for children to grow plants and conducting research into plants, pests and environmental issues affecting gardeners.

EDITED BY

David S. Ingram

Daphne Vince-Prue

Peter J. Gregory

THIRD EDITION

This edition first published 2016 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Published in association with the Royal Horticultural Society.

First published 2002 by Blackwell Science Ltd; Second Edition 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Science and the garden : the scientific basis of horticultural practice / edited by David S. Ingram, Daphne Vince-Prue, Peter J. Gregory. Third edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-118-77843-2 (pbk.)
1. Horticulture. 2. Gardening. I. Ingram, David S. II. Vince-Prue, Daphne. III. Gregory, P. J.
SB318.S29 2016
635dc23

2015024749

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Cover images: Large image [of garden steps and gate; Fig. 1.1 in 3rd edition] - Photograph David S. Ingram. Top small image [flower with hoverflies; Fig. 18.3c in 3rd edition] - Photograph and reproduced courtesy of the University of Warwick.

Centre small image [rooted cutting; Fig. 11.5c in 3rd edition] - Photograph and courtesy of the Royal Horticultural Society. Bottom small image [half flower of Antirrhinum; Fig. 3.5 in 3rd edition] - Scan and John Bebbington, FRPS.

Previous editions of Science and the Garden have proved very popular with students of horticulture and professional and amateur gardeners wishing to know more about the plants and practices that are the everyday currency of gardening. We hope that this new edition will satisfy these audiences and encourage others to learn more about a branch of science that is endlessly fascinating and a vital adjunct to all good horticulture.

In the third edition we have added new chapters on Climate and other environmental changes (Chapter 15) and Health, well-being and socio-cultural benefits (Chapter 23). Many of the other chapters have been completely rewritten or extensively revised, often with new authors and/or illustrators, and the remainder have been carefully updated and re-edited. We have renamed several of the chapters and have also taken the opportunity to divide others or to move material from one chapter to another where we felt that this would improve the ability of the reader to comprehend a subject more easily.

With a large number of authors writing about an interrelated group of topics, some overlap between chapters is inevitable. We have done our best to keep this to a minimum, but not to such an extent that it will hinder the many users of the book who do not wish to read the chapters in sequence, but prefer to explore particular topics as and when it suits them, and for whom it is important that the individual chapters include sufficient background information to be read in isolation. Where we felt that a more complete understanding of a particular topic could be obtained by consulting other chapters, however, we have provided cross-references.

We are most grateful to the many authors and illustrators, mainly but not exclusively drawn from the Science Committee and staff of the Royal Horticultural Society, past and present, for their hard work and commitment to this project, and for responding promptly to the suggested changes to their initial manuscripts or illustrations. This has allowed the whole enterprise to reach fruition on time. We thank Nigel Balmforth, Kelvin Matthews and other staff at Wiley-Blackwell for their encouragement and professional help throughout the preparation of the new edition, Alison Ingram for indispensable editorial support and the staff of the Royal Horticultural Society for their continued and invaluable assistance and advice.

David S. Ingram (North Berwick)
Daphne Vince-Prue (Goring-on-Thames)
Peter J. Gregory (Emsworth)
March 2015

We hope that this second edition of Science and the Garden will be of interest and value to students of horticulture, professional horticulturists and home gardeners. In preparing it we have completely re-edited all the chapters from the first edition, removing unnecessary material, adding new information and re-ordering or re-writing where appropriate. If, in our thorough editing, we have introduced errors, the fault is ours, not that of the authors. We have also added four new chapters, dealing with matters that we felt were not adequately covered in the first edition, namely Diversity in the Plant World (Chapter 1), Conservation and Sustainable Gardening (Chapter18), Gardens and the Natural World (Chapter 19) and Gardens for Science (Chapter 20).