Costa’s Garden: Flowers

Costa’s Garden: Flowers

Costa Georgiadis

Brenna Quinlan

ABC Books, 2024

32pp., hbk., RRP $A24.99

9780733343360

In days gone by, lessons about flowers focused on drawing diagrams, sometimes from real-life models, and labelling the parts with terms like petals, pistils, stamens, leaves and so on and that was pretty much it.

But did you know that flowers can be loudspeakers, billboards, memory-makers and even tell stories?

In the first of this new series of narrative non fiction picture books, gardening guru Costa Georgiadis invites young readers to put on their nature goggles and join him in his garden to take a closer look at the flowers that grow there.  But rather than a horticultural tome dumbed down for littlies and prettied up with pictures, it becomes an adventure as we wander through the flower patch and learn how flowers connect us to nature, and, indeed, nature to nature.

“They are a bit like a bum and undies.  They go together.”

As each page is turned and we are presented with stunning illustrations of actual flowers we learn about their critical role in maintaining both the balance in nature and human wellbeing as we learn how flowers engage our heart, head and hands. 

“I believe in gardening the soil as well as the soul.”

A peek inside…

Over the past few years there have been a number of books for younger readers that have raised awareness about the importance of the local environment, and particularly, the critical predicament of the insects and minibeasts that live there as there habitat diminishes and thus their ability to carry out their vital function in Nature is threatened, and this has inspired many to plant gardens, even if that is just a flower box on a balcony.  But this is one of a few that actually examines what is being planted, how it grows, and its connections and contributions to big picture.  It encourages readers to see and feel the joy in nature, explore its wonders and marvel at how the tiniest things can have the most enormous impact. If the previous books haven’t inspired them to go outside and get their hands dirty, then this one does because who could resist not only being surrounded by the colour, smell and miracles of flowers but also doing something, even if it’s small, to make their world that bit more magical.

“With our nature goggles on, the more we look, the more we learn, the more we learn the more we understand…the more we understand the more prepared we are to act. And when we act, we fall more and more in love with nature.” 

Perhaps taking a troubled child for a walk through a flower-filled garden and then helping them create one of their own could be just the therapy they need.