Activities

Book Publishing

Due to Michael Packard’s illness in 2010 and 2011, PPL’s production of new titles has been much delayed. However, one best-seller was published: Le or La – How to Remember the Genders of French Nouns (£3.00) by Richard Gordon-Freeman.

Ruth Tittensor’s From Peat Bog to Conifer Forest – An Oral History of Whitelee, its Community and Landscape was highly praised and recommended; it was short-listed for the prestigious Saltire Society’s Scottish History Book of the Year Award in 2009 (see the reviews on the book’s descriptive page).

So the previously announced new titles in production for publication in 2012 are: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Landscape (Monographs on Landscape and Design series) by David Jacques; Garden and Landscape (Workshops on Garden design series) by the late Anthony du Gard Pasley; Planting and Design for Seaside and Shelter (Workshops on Garden Design series) by the late Debbie Jolley; An Author and a Gardener – the Gardens and Friendship of Edith Wharton and Lawrence Johnston (Monographs on Landscape etc. series) by Allan Ruff; Conceptualist Landscapes (Workshops on Garden Design series) by Paul Cooper; The Basics of Planting Design (Workshops on Garden Design series) by Lucy Huntington; Designing Gardens on Slopes (Workshops on Garden Design series) by Liz Davies and Ruth Chivers; Scabby Horses and Unrung Swine – the Regulation of Livestock in the Early Modern Period (Rural History series) by John Kruse.

Distribution for other publishers

Distribution is also carried out for Oxygraphics Ltd, notably David Walker’s Energy, Plants and Man and his CD Like Clockwork (see www.oxygraphics.co.uk) and for Stipes Publishing’s books from the USA. Please note that we no longer distribute Arabic dictionaries or Middle Eastern titles.

How to Order

This is a small, specialized, independent company and is therefore a hostage to the supermarket-style attitudes of the large bookselling chains. A limited selection of our books is stocked by more knowledgeable booksellers such as Foyle’s in London, Heffer’s in Cambridge, and Blackwell’s in Oxford; at the language specialists The European Bookshop and the French Bookshop in London; and the RHS bookshops at Wisley and Harlow Carr for garden design and history titles. Most other shops, including Waterstone’s, prefer to special-order through the wholesalers Gardners of Eastbourne and Bertram Trading of Norwich, which have accounts with us; this includes Amazon whom we do not supply direct.

Therefore, to speed up the fulfilment of orders, it is better to contact us by e-mail or landline phone, and to give credit/debit card details verbally (many people still feel safer paying in this way, and actually it is not economic for us to operate a payment system through this website at the moment, though we are considering the possibility): e-mail contact is info@packardpublishing.co.uk or phone and fax (+44) (0)1243 537977.

Events

We will resume attendance at garden design conferences in 2012, and plan to exhibit at the Society of Garden Designers’ spring and autumn seminars held at Imperial College, London, on the Saturdays, 28 April and 10 November respectively.

In the interim, we will show garden-design books at the design colleges in the UK throughout the academic year, and attend specialist applied ecology meetings and seminars.