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…
For some decades after colonization began, the settlers continued to use the English gardening manuals they had brought with them. These were still good sources on techniques, but poor guides to seasonal operations. George Chapman's Hand Book to the…
The Rev. Dr Henry Burgess was a Victorian curate who followed John Laurence's advice to obtain exercise cultivating his garden. When not editing The Journal of Sacred Literature, he was penning practical advice for the Gardener's Chronicle (1846-9).…
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…
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…
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 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…