Hello
there, if you've reached this page via the advert. I hope you find it
of interest.
Hello
there, if you've reached this page via the advert. I hope you find it
of interest.
The paperback edition of the book, published by France Lincoln Ltd, London, is now available. Buy it through amazon.co.uk.
Publishers' Introduction:
Inspiration,
happy accidents, and outright obsessions have all had their way with
gardens, but nothing has done more to shape the modern garden than
plants themselves. In a story that ranges from continent to continent
and spans four centuries, botanist and gardener David Stuart reveals
how the garden as we know it was created not by garden designers but
by ordinary gardeners responding to exotic and novel plants that
suggested new spaces, places, and means of display. The history
begins with two earth-changing eventsÑthe establishment of
colonies in the Americas and the spread of the Turkish empireÑthat
brought the first wave of flowering exotics to gardens across Europe.
Stuart relates how, over the following centuries, the influx of new
plants inspired a frenzy of hybridization (by a new breed of
gardener, the florist), which in turn inspired such features as the
familiar herbaceous border, flower bed, and rose garden, as well as
the now little-known rockery, shrubbery, and wilderness.
From the
Dutch tulip mania to the rhododendron craze to the eighteenth-century
European passion for "American gardens," Stuart's book
traces the shape of the modern garden as it changed with the fashion,
returning at last to classic, cottage garden varieties long neglected
in favor or the foreign and new. In conclusion, Stuart looks at plant
prospecting today, now that the collecting of plants may prove
essential to protecting botanical diversity and preserving plant
species rapidly disappearing from the wild. Long shaped by plants,
our gardens may now prove crucial to preserving the plants
themselves.
David Stuart, a biologist and botanist, has been a columnist for The Sunday Times and a nurseryman. He is also the author of several books including The Garden Triumphant: A Victorian Legacy.
But why not buy a copy now?
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