Garden Flowers, 1960 (DJ)

Garden Flowers, 1960,  Series 536.

This is the 8th book in the Nature series, 536.  Garden Flowers was written b7Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald and illustrated by John Leigh-Pemberton.  Only the earliest editions of this book were published with a dust-wrapper.

It is a gloriously colourful book which many people will remember from school, library or home.  It displays the most common garden flowers through the seasons – though mainly Spring and Summer, for obvious reasons, in a very grand setting.  I used to wonder why Leigh-Pemberton had chosen to use the grounds of a stately home as the backdrop to his illustrations rather than something more domestic, something more ‘Ladybird’.  But when I found out a bit more about Leigh-Pemberton’s background, I realised that he probably HAD simply painted the flowers as he saw them in his own back garden!

This copy still has its original unclipped DJ and is in ‘good’ condition – with a number of cosmetic faults which aren’t so visible until you open it up.  The dustwrapper has the usual edge and shelf wear and rubbing but there are light tea stains to the front endpapers and more stains to the back endpapers.  There’s also a neat name and address in pencil to the front free endpaper.  This would erase, buy why would you?  The reading pages escape the staining except for the very bottom edge of later pages.  A reasonable DJ copy or good reading copy.