Rare Horticultural Books

[vhgmcbuddy]

We all keep an eye open for some of the scarce books that cover our machines, always hoping that one will turn up at a car boot sale, and sometimes we get lucky, if not we have to guess what they contain.
On that well known auction site a couple of weeks ago, a chap was offering a copy of “British Tractors and Powered Cultivators” by Ashby 1949 . I was curious and ordered a copy from my local library, if it is not stocked in their area, you have to pay £7.00 to borrow it, it took a couple of weeks, but they found a copy for me from Devon, what a very good book, it covers just about every machine you can imagine in the Horticultural world, right down to the Lloyd Sickle mower, it contains full specifications and prices of all the bits in 1949. I have ordered other books like this from the library in the past, if it is from the British Library, then you have to agree to a £100. fine if you lose it, which seems fair enough, given the light fingered brigade out there, Well worth it, if you cant get hold of a copy for yourself.

[charlie]

I was very lucky to get a copy in 1999 from New Zealand via bookfinder.com for a lot less than the one on that auction sent went for recently. As you rightly say a very useful book, giving prices of machines and attachments along with spec for machine often including weight.

[trustymasseyman]

Great book I found my copy on Amazon, another good book from 1949 is mechanical aids to gardening by J G Wallace

[hortiman]

I too was lucky enough to find a copy of the book by Mr Ashby, who came from Hailsham in Sussex, not very far from where we used to live, in fact My Father was a pupil at Knights Nurseries in Hailsham, they have now become ‘Sussex plants Ltd’ and still going strong.

[charlie]

Another book is Mechanical Aids to the Smallholder by Denys De Saulles, I got my copy via the internet from Australia. One small error I found was the photo of the Monro Tiller is printed with the wrong way round ie miller drive appears on left rather than right.

[Author]

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