As also, the physick garden, wilderness, conservatory, and vineyard, according to the practice of the most experienc'd gardeners of the present age. Interspers'd with the history of the plants, the characters of each genus, and the names of all the…
Maria Jacson (mis-spelled Jackson) (1755-1829) wrote her book The Florist's Manual (1816) for middle-class women, so that their choice and arrangement of plants would ‘procure a succession of enamelled borders' (p.4) through spring and summer. She…
As well as writing his own books on gardening and arboriculture, the English virtuoso John Evelyn translated several influential French manuals. The first (1658) was Nicolas de Bonnefons's Le Jardinier François, a handbook on the cultivation of…
Walter Boa Brockie (1897-1972) was the curator of the Otari Open-air Native Plant Museum from 1947 to 1962, following Leonard Cockayne (1926-1934). He had a special interest in alpine plants, having worked with James McPherson on the development of…
The de Beer collection contains three editions of John Evelyn's (1620-1705) Silva (or Sylva), the first publication officially sponsored by the Royal Society. This book promoted the planting of trees to avert the timber crisis facing the British…
John Gerard's reputation rests principally upon his Herball or generall historie of plants (1597). It was not original. It was based on the work of Rembert Dodoens and de L'Obel. It does however contain original gardening advice, based on Gerard's…
The Rev. John Laurence (1668-1732), was the first of sixteen clergymen to write important gardening books in the 18th century. His first work The Clergy-Man's Recreation (1714) aimed to preserve the health of clergy by encouraging them…
Rural scenery is so congenial to the human mind, that there are few persons who do not indulge the hope of retiring at some period into the country.' So begins John Claudius Loudon's A Treatise on Forming, Improving and Managing Country…
Although Sir Uvedale Price (1747-1829) cannot be described as a writer of gardening manuals, his theoretical contributions to the debate over what constituted a ‘picturesque' landscape greatly influenced practising landscape gardeners. His Essays…
ohn Rea (d. 1681) was a professional nurseryman and garden designer who wrote just one gardening book: Flora Ceres & Pomona (1665). His audience were ‘florists', the term then used for flower fanciers and collectors. Having found Parkinson's 1628…
In 1754 Robert Adam left Scotland for France and Italy on a Grand Tour. In Italy he met the French architect, Charles Louis Clérisseau, and the Italian, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who would both have a significant influence upon him and his later…
Following a stay in Rome in 1650, Fréart de Chambray published this anthology of ten ancient and modern writers on the classical orders. He argues that the Greek orders (the Doric, the Ionic, and Corinthian) are perfect models for all architecture…
First published in 1696, this short history by the Anglican churchman and scholar, Basil Kennett, recounts the rise, progress, and decay of Ancient Rome eighty years before Gibbon's Decline and fall …. A popular publication, it was reprinted no…