Last night was one of Melbourne's night of nights. Horticulture's media elite were gathered for the release of Jane Edmanson's new book FromThe Ground Up. Fittingly it was held at Flemington Racecourse where the rose gardens are sacred.
This book was originally instigated by Neutrog, a South Australian company famous for their quality fertilisers, including Sudden Impact For Roses, as used by head gardener Terry Freeman at Flemington.
Neutrog realised that each state in Australia has a unique climate for gardening and so lets write a book for each state. Jane Edmanson has been responsible for the Victorian edition and graciously accepted the accolades cast upon her last night.
One of the guests I met which I found most interesting was a guy by the name of Andy Rasheed who had come across from Adelaide. He was responsible for a lot of the photography in Jane's book. We talked about my vagaries of aperature and its affects on shots, and I also told him of an earlier blog where I was unable to photograph the blue flower of the native hibiscus alyogyne and get the colour right - it would come out mauve. Andy's simple solution was to edit the colour with some photograpy software! Not the answer I was expecting, but full of honesty. He is going to send me some photos for this blog but his website is worth a look at, and I have borrowed a couple of his shots and put them below. His website is Andy's website eyefood. One look and you will truly agree, this man is very talented.
And with that, I was one of the last to leave at 9.55, no doubt the place was booked until 10. Although I haven't yet read the book, I have a feeling that it will become one of the great gardening reference books of our time, but we will do a full review of the book in the next couple of weeks.
Comments