Richard Taylor, author of the best-selling How to Read a Church, joins forces with garden historian Andrew Eburne to produce the ultimate guide to historic and modern gardens. Gardens are amongst the fastest-growing visitor attractions today - in the UK alone 15 million people will visit a garden this year. How to Read an English Garden is the essential book for every garden lover. It provides an account of the different elements of gardens of all ages and explains their meaning and their history: here, you'll find the answer to such questions as: when were tulips introduced into our gardens, and what was 'tulip-mania'? What is a knot-garden, and what was the origin of its design? Who was 'Capability' Brown, and how did he get his name? Why are mazes such a common feature in English garden design? In addition, the book explains how lawns, flowerbeds, trees and ponds came to be a feature not just of grand houses but of gardens everywhere. Among the many subjects covered are: garden design, plant introductions and collectors, kitchen gardens, water gardens, and garden styles from around the world: English, American, Chinese and Moorish to name just a few. Clearly laid out and beautifully illustrated, How to Read an English Garden brings historic and modern gardens to life: a book to accompany garden visitors everywhere, or to be enjoyed and dipped into at home.

"Whether a small plot in the backyard of an inner-urban home or a capital city's sprawling botanic garden, Australians have long desired a patch of dirt to plough or enjoy. 'Reading the garden' explores our deep affection for gardens and gardening and illuminates their numerous meanings and uses from European settlement to the late twentieth century."--Cover.

When George I, Elector of Hanover, was crowned King of England in 1714, he established a dynastic union between the two countries that endured until 1837, leaving many cultural and political accomplishments to posterity. The 300th anniversary of this union led the Institute of Landscape Architecture, Technische Universität Dresden, and the Centre of Garden and Landscape Architecture (CGL), Leibniz Universität Hannover, to take a critical look at the gardens that resulted. The symposium “Hanover and England: a union of state and garden / German and British garden culture between 1714 and today” was sponsored by the Lower Saxonian Ministry of Science and Culture. The resulting papers dealt with far more than garden history, addressing as well the background and channels by which ideas on art, agriculture, commerce, technology, literature and politics were exchanged. Given the encyclopedic interests of late 18th century thinkers, it was necessary to invite several academic disciplines to participate, in order to describe and discuss the cultural transfer between Great Britain and Hanover. The transfer of horticultural and artistic ideas very often flourished in the 19th century at different places. For this reason, the conference focused on two key aspects: the Hanoverian-British exchange between 1714 and 1837 (the period of the actual royal union) and the Anglo-German relations that endure to the present day. Als Georg I., Kurfürst von Hannover, 1714 zum König von England gekrönt wurde, begründete dies eine Personalunion zwischen den beiden Ländern, die bis 1837 bestand und der Nachwelt eine Vielzahl kultureller und politischer Errungenschaften hinterließ. Das 300-jährige Jubiläum dieses Zusammenschlusses nahmen das Institut für Landschaftsarchitektur der Technischen Universität Dresden und das Zentrum für Gartenkunst und Landschaftsarchitektur (CGL) der Leibniz Universität Hannover zum Anlass, sich kritisch mit den in dieser Zeit entstandenen Gärten auseinanderzusetzen. Das Symposium „Hanover and England: a union of state and garden / German and British garden culture between 1714 and today“ wurde vom Niedersächsischen Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur gefördert. Die Beiträge beschäftigten sich nicht nur mit Gartengeschichte, sondern widmeten sich auch dem Austausch von Ideen zu Kunst, Landwirtschaft, Handel, Technologie, Literatur und Politik. So schien es sinnvoll, unterschiedliche akademische Disziplinen zur Teilnahme einzuladen, um den kulturellen Transfer zwischen Großbritannien und Hannover zu untersuchen und zu diskutieren. Die Konferenz konzentrierte sich auf zwei Schlüsselaspekte: den hannoverisch-britischen Austausch zwischen 1714 und 1837 (die Zeit der Personalunion) und die deutsch-englischen Beziehungen, die bis heute andauern.

'Roderick Floud's ground-breaking study of the history, money, places and personalities involved in British gardens over the past 350 years gives fascinating insight into why gardening is part of this country's soul.' Michael Heseltine, Deputy Prime Minister (1996-1997) 'Thousands of books have been written about the history of British gardens but Roderick Floud, one of Britain's most distinguished economic historians, asks new and important questions: how much did gardens cost to build and maintain, and where did the money come from? Superbly researched, it is full of information which will surprise both economists and gardeners. The book is fun as well as edifying: Floud shows us gardens grand and humble, and introduces us gardeners, plantsmen and technologies in wonderful varieties.' Jane Humphries, Centennial Professor, London School of Economics At least since the seventeenth century, most of the English population have been unable to stop making, improving and dreaming of gardens. Yet in all the thousands of books about them, this is the first to address seriously the question of how much gardens and gardening have cost, and to work out the place of gardens in the economic, as well as the horticultural, life of the nation. It is a new kind of gardening history. Beginning with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, Roderick Floud describes the role of the monarchy and central and local government in creating gardens, as well as that of the (generally aristocratic or plutocratic) builders of the great gardens of Stuart, Georgian and Victorian England. He considers the designers of these gardens as both artists and businessmen - often earning enormous sums by modern standards, matched by the nurserymen and plant collectors who supplied their plants. He uncovers the lives and rewards of working gardeners, the domestic gardens that came with the growth of suburbs and the impact of gardening on technical developments from man-made lakes to central heating. AN ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH GARDEN shows the extraordinary commitment of money as well as time that the English have made to gardens and gardening over three and a half centuries. It reveals the connections of our gardens to the re-establishment of the English monarchy, the national debt, transport during the Industrial Revolution, the new industries of steam, glass and iron, and the built environment that is now all around us. It is a fresh perspective on the history of England and will open the eyes of gardeners - and garden visitors - to an unexpected dimension of what they do.

Named one of “the year’s best gardening books” by The Spectator (UK, Nov. 2014) The 1890s saw a revolution in advertising. Cheap paper, faster printing, rural mail delivery, railroad shipping, and chromolithography combined to pave the way for the first modern, mass-produced catalogs. The most prominent of these, reaching American households by the thousands, were seed and nursery catalogs with beautiful pictures of middle-class homes surrounded by sprawling lawns, exotic plants, and the latest garden accessories—in other words, the quintessential English-style garden. America’s Romance with the English Garden is the story of tastemakers and homemakers, of savvy businessmen and a growing American middle class eager to buy their products. It’s also the story of the beginnings of the modern garden industry, which seduced the masses with its images and fixed the English garden in the mind of the American consumer. Seed and nursery catalogs delivered aspirational images to front doorsteps from California to Maine, and the English garden became the look of America.

Illustrated survey of gardening lore from the Norman Conquest to the Renaissance reveals wealth of ancient secrets drawn from obscure sources, chronicling cultivation of pleasure gardens as well as herbariums, orchards, and vineyards.

Over the course of the long 18th century, many of England's grandest country houses became known for displaying noteworthy architecture and design, large collections of sculptures and paintings, and expansive landscape gardens and parks. Although these houses continued to function as residences and spaces of elite retreat, they had powerful public identities: increasingly accessible to tourists and extensively described by travel writers, they began to be celebrated as sites of great importance to national culture. This book examines how these identities emerged, repositioning the importance of country houses in 18th-century Britain and exploring what it took to turn them into tourist attractions. Drawing on travel books, guidebooks, and dozens of tourists' diaries and letters, it explores what it meant to tour country houses such as Blenheim Palace, Chatsworth, Wilton, Kedleston and Burghley in the tumultuous 1700s. It also questions the legacies of these early tourists: both as a critical cultural practice in the 18th century and an extraordinary and controversial influence in British culture today, country-house tourism is a phenomenon that demands investigation.