The Trust Garden Library

Education resource in: Conservation, Horticulture, Heritage, Design, Landscape, Wildlife.

Introduction

I have built a Garden Library for the use of the charity. This is additional to my main library in the house which now comprises several thousand items.

The library is for the benefit of our students, volunteers, clients from Wiltshire County Council Educational and Social Services, and local students.  It is also place of rest and shade in hot weather and for meals to be taken.

I have always loved books and started collecting them when I was a child, spending my pocket money in second hand bookshops and brica-brac shops in Stroud, inspired and guided by my Uncle Terry who engendered in me a love of learning and a passion for books and for history.

The Garden Library is also for the benefit of the students and volunteers of The Trust. The books are in the Summerhouse which affords a place of study, rest, calm, and shade. 

The space it occupies is also used for study, instruction, teaching in the various subjects and skills the Trust can offer.

 

Library Study Room

The Garden Library is located in the lage summer house on the other side of the pond and beach.  This is used as a reference place and tutorial base to help our students and volunteers. It is fully equipped with desk, lighting, chairs etc and is about14ft. x 10ft.

PurposeThe purpose of the collection is to provide specific reference tools for teaching and horticulture in general as well as wildlife audits and study. It also enables investigation for various projects and community activities. Another use of the library is to enhance understanding of the heritage and traditions of gardening, landscape, design, conservation etc. (this of course includes the work of the great gardeners, landscapers, designers, botanists  etc of the past).

The scientific and social aspects of horticulture is not ignored for there are sections on the social history of gardens and landscape. And also such matters as ecology, conservation, botany, ornithology,  soil science, aboriculture, etc.

In the area of culture and art there is a collection of books dealing with how artists, poets, and writers have responded to the landscape and the idyll of the garden and nature.

Access & Use: Acccess to the Garden Library and Study room is restricted to our Trustees,  Council of Advsers, Society of Friends, Volunteers, and Students. It is a reference library and no books are loaned out.

 

Library Sections

The GARDEN LIBRARY comprises related categories (all within the broad themes of gardening/landscape/nature/ heritage  etc) which are:

1. Great gardeners.

2. Great gardens.

3. History of English landscape.

4. Landscape design.

5. English country houses & parks.

6. Garden wildlife.

7. Botany.

8. Propagation.

9. Greenhouse gardening.

10. Garden design & decor.

11. Architecture.

12. Trees & shrubs.      

13. Encyclopaedias.

14. Butterflies & moths.

15. Amphibians.

16. Birds.    

17. Insects & Bees.      

18. Water gardening/ponds.

19. Garden d.i.y. & crafts.

20. Wild plants/flowers.

21. Dartmoor.

22. County gardens.

23. Herbs.

24. Rural social history.

25. Wayfinding.

26. The English village.

27. Mammals.

28. County Landscapes.

29. Photography.

30. Astronomy.

31. British Wildlife.

32. British landscape painters.

33. Literature and the landscape

34. Art and the landscape

35. Archaeology & Landscape.

36. Rivers and Landscape.

37. Woods & Landscape

38. Town/urban Gardens.

39. Sacred Landscape.

40. Gardens & spirituality

41. Garden Lore/legends/myth

42. Ecology.

43. Environment.

43. Geology/soil/geography.

New sections and subjects will be added.   So far the garden faculty of The Library comprises several hundred items. It is of course always growing.