Book Review: The Savage Garden by Peter D’Amato

Peter D’Amato has a fetish for the unusual, the strange, and the down right creepy. In his Horticultural Society’s award-winning book, The Savage Garden: Cultivating Carnivorous Plants, D’Amato shows us an alternate plant world; a world where the cousins of the average cottage plants prefer flesh to fertilizer; meat to mulch.

D’Amato’s love and admiration for the carnivores is evident from the first page of the introduction chapter when he had his ‚”first love affair with a Venus flytrap”, as well as in the tender descriptions of his beloved plants. In the introduction, D’Amato talks about a man named Carl Liche, who claimed he saw a young maiden sacrificed to a man-eating tree by natives in Madagascar in 1860. Liche was published in the scientific and popular magazines of that time, and so it was believed by many to be true. It wasn’t.

Still, with those stories, Hollywood films, and a little bit of the truth (it isn’t unheard of for the largest of some species to eat lizards, or even rodents), people remain suspicious of the savage side of the plant world. D’Amato starts right off getting the reader to look at his fears, grounded in reality, or not, and gets the reader to ask what he really knew about plants to begin with. Did you know petunias, while not actually carnivorous, catch and kill insects? So do potato plants, tobacco, and teasels.

The Basics of Cultivation

D’Amato starts with the soils that would most replicate the natural soils where carnivorous plants thrive. He offers a number of interesting containers, and places to grow carnivorous plants, which serve to encourage you to find a way to let them into your home. His advice is so specific, a serious gardener will want to hug him (or the book).

One of the interesting issues D’Amato brings up is dormancy. Dormancy is not only natural for carnivorous plants, for some, it’s a requirement. These particular plants need to go dormant, and shouldn’t be forced into plant growth or they will die. D’Amato goes into why a plant may go into dormancy and why the plant shouldn’t be disturbed during this time.

Where to Grow Carnivorous Plants

This second section also goes into lighting, containers, hot houses, cool houses, and diseases – everything necessary to be successful in keeping these plants alive. The old school of thought was that these specialty plants needed to be kept in humid terrariums or hot houses; because of the many years of growers’ experimentation, they can now be grown in many different settings.

D’Amato explains how to keep them in terrariums, the windowsill, and outdoors. The chapter goes into creating bogs for the plants, as well. The chapter leaves nothing to the imagination, bless him.

The Plants And How to Grow Them

The third section has profiles on the different varieties of carnivorous plants. They are fairly in-depth. D’Amato attempts to give a little extra hint on each plant’s preferences, and he does this nicely.

The first plant he discusses is, not surprisingly, the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). He describes seeing it in action for the first time as ‚”awe inspiring”, and they are hands-down, the most famous carnivore of them all. Venus flytraps are native only to the coastal plain of southeastern North Carolina, and extreme northeastern South Carolina.

The Cobra Plant (Darlingtonia californica) with its puffy head, and forked tongue, is native only to extreme Northern California, and southern Oregon.

D’Amato’s voice comes through so clearly, his explanations, and directions might as well be coming straight from his lips to the reader’s ear. D’Amato’s excitement over the flesh-eating plants is endearing; his tone and sincerity, infectious. Every type of gardener and plant-lover needs to read this book. D’Amato has a way if being passionate, funny and extremely informational – all at the same time.

Interested in purchasing your own carnivorous plant? D’Amato’s nursery, California Carnivores, has the world’s largest collection if carnivorous plants.

The Savage Garden: Cultivating Carnivorous Plants by Peter D’Amato, Ten Speed Press, 1998; ISBN 0-89815-915-6, 314 pages.