A Little History Of British Gardening

Download or read book A Little History of British Gardening written by Jenny Uglow and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get out in your garden and discover the history hidden in the hedges. Did the Romans have rakes? Did the monks get muddy? Did potatoes seem really, really weird when they arrived on our shores? Drawn from Jenny Uglow's own love for plants, this lively 'potted' history of gardening in Britain takes us on a garden tour from the thorn hedges around prehistoric settlements to the rage for ornamental grasses and 'outdoor rooms' today. Tracking down the ordinary folk who worked the earth - from weeding women to florists - as well as aristocrats and grand designers and famous plant-hunters, A Little History of British Gardening is brought to life by gorgeously vivid illustrations and Uglow's insightful wisdom. Not only dealing with flowery meads, grottoes and vistas, landscapes and ha-has, parks and allotments, Uglow explains, for example, how the Tudors made their curious knots; how housewives used herbs to stop freckles; how the suburbs dug for victory in World War II. With a brief guide to particular historic or evocative gardens open to the public, this is a book to put in your pocket when planning a crisp, winter's day out - but also to read in your armchair with a well-earned glass of red, after a hard day's graft in your own garden. 'Enchanting, stirringly evocative and fascinating' Daily Mail 'This book will be a joy for any gardener' Independent

Download or read book My Garden (Book) written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2001-05-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our finest writers on one of her greatest loves. Jamaica Kincaid's first garden in Vermont was a plot in the middle of her front lawn. There, to the consternation of more experienced friends, she planted only seeds of the flowers she liked best. In My Garden (Book) she gathers all she loves about gardening and plants, and examines it generously, passionately, and with sharp, idiosyncratic discrimination. Kincaid's affections are matched in intensity only by her dislikes. She loves spring and summer but cannot bring herself to love winter, for it hides the garden. She adores the rhododendron Jane Grant, and appreciates ordinary Blue Lake string beans, but abhors the Asiatic lily. The sources of her inspiration -- seed catalogues, the gardener Gertrude Jekyll, gardens like Monet's at Giverny -- are subjected to intense scrutiny. She also examines the idea of the garden on Antigua, where she grew up. My Garden (Book) is an intimate, playful, and penetrating book on gardens, the plants that fill them, and the persons who tend them.

Download or read book Reflections on the History of Art written by Ernst Hans Gombrich and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays discuss Greek and Chineese art, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dutch genre painting, Rubens, Rembrandt, art collecting, museums, and Freud's aesthetics

Download or read book The Story of the English Garden written by Ambra Edwards and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2018-09-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Story of the English Garden is the National Trust's accessible history of the nation's gardens, sumptuously illustrated and artfully curated. From tiny medieval gardens to vast Georgian parks, from Victorian glasshouses crammed with exotic specimens to the elegant outdoor 'rooms' of the Edwardians and the functional, ecologically aware gardens of today, this book explores the love affair between the English and their gardens for over 500 years. It's a fascinating story about passion – and power and politics too. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout and includes new photography of some of the most influential gardens in the world, including Sissinghurst. Drawn from the National Trust's extensive archives, The Story of the English Garden is the definitive guide to Europe's greatest collection of historic gardens – a rich celebration of World Heritage sites, rare and exotic plants and groundbreaking architectural design.

Download or read book Life in the Garden written by Penelope Lively and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Booker Prize winner and national bestselling author, reflections on gardening, art, literature, and life Penelope Lively takes up her key themes of time and memory, and her lifelong passions for art, literature, and gardening in this philosophical and poetic memoir. From the courtyards of her childhood home in Cairo to a family cottage in Somerset, to her own gardens in Oxford and London, Lively conducts an expert tour, taking us from Eden to Sissinghurst and into her own backyard, traversing the lives of writers like Virginia Woolf and Philip Larkin while imparting her own sly and spare wisdom. "Her body of work proves that certain themes never go out of fashion," writes the New York Times Book Review, as true of this beautiful volume as of the rest of the Lively canon. Now in her eighty-fourth year, Lively muses, "To garden is to elide past, present, and future; it is a defiance of time."

Download or read book An Economic History of the English Garden written by Roderick Floud and published by Penguin Press. This book was released on 2020-11-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '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.

Download or read book A Natural History of English Gardening, 1650-1800 written by Mark Laird and published by Paul Mellon Centre. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press."