The Making of the English Gardener
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Plants, Books and Inspiration, 1560-1660
Margaret Willes
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Format: PaperPrice: $30.00
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The people and publications at the root of a national obsession
In the century between the accession of Elizabeth I and the restoration of Charles II, a horticultural revolution took place in England, making it a leading player in the European horticultural game. Ideas were exchanged across networks of gardeners, botanists, scholars, and courtiers, and the burgeoning vernacular book trade spread this new knowledge still further—reaching even the growing number of gardeners furnishing their more modest plots across the verdant nation and its young colonies in the Americas.
Margaret Willes introduces a plethora of garden enthusiasts, from the renowned to the legions of anonymous workers who created and tended the great estates. Packed with illustrations from the herbals, design treatises, and practical manuals that inspired these men—and occasionally women—Willes's book enthrallingly charts how England's garden grew.
“Willes, who was a publisher for the National Trust, is a true bibliophile who has undertaken an ambitious piece of research that will be invaluable to students of gardens and their history.”—Rosie Atkins, History Today
“…..all can enjoy the illuminating way Willes puts gardens into context.”—Gardens Illustrated
“The sheer handling of a mass of material and making it readable would have been recommendation enough for this book. But it is so much more – a revelation, a delight, and a work that no one who has made a garden can be without.”—Ronald Blythe, The Church Times (Christmas Books)
“It is impossible, in a brief review, to do justice to a book so packed with information, but the author’s enthusiasm for her subject, the people from all walks of life who she so vividly evokes, the books and gardens she describes, make this as enjoyable to read as it is invaluable for reference. “—Anne Carter, Trafodion – Occasional Writings for the Welsh Gardens Trust Issue 1
“The most successful of the year’s garden history books is Margaret Willes’s The Making of the English Gardener: Plants, Books and Inspiration 1550…..She deserves a good readership both in and outside England.”—Robin Lane Fox, Financial Times (Garden Books of the Year)
“A heady, brilliant period, well documented by Margaret Willes’s The Making of the English Gardener….Willes is particularly well informed on the books that fed the new obsession and the libraries put together by early English botanists….[An] excellent study.”—Anna Pavord, The Independent Magazine (Garden Books of the Year)
Publication Date: August 13, 2013
80 b/w +24 pp. color illus.
