'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.

An altogether different kind of book on English gardens—the first of its kind—a look at the history of England’s magnificent gardens as a history of Britain itself, from the seventeenth-century gardens of Charles II to those of Prince Charles today. In this rich, revelatory history, Sir Roderick Floud, one of Britain’s preeminent economic historians, writes that gardens have been created in Britain since Roman times but that their true growth began in the seventeenth century; by the eighteenth century, nurseries in London took up 100 acres, with ten million plants (!) that were worth more than all of the nurseries in France combined. Floud’s book takes us through more than three centuries of English history as he writes of the kings, queens, and princes whose garden obsessions changed the landscape of England itself, from Stuart, Georgian, and Victorian England to today’s Windsors. Here are William and Mary, who brought Dutch gardens and bulbs to Britain; William, who twice had his entire garden lowered in order to see the river from his apartments; and his successor, Queen Anne, who, like many others since, vowed to spend little on her gardens and instead spent millions. Floud also writes of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the founder of Kew Gardens, who spent more than $40,000 on a single twenty-five-foot tulip tree for Carlton House; Queen Victoria, who built the largest, most advanced and most efficient kitchen garden in Britain; and Prince Charles, who created and designed the gardens of Highgrove, inspired by his boyhood memories of his grandmother’s gardens. We see Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who created a magnificent garden at Blenheim Palace, only to tear it apart and build a greater one; Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, the savior of Chatsworth’s 100-acre garden in the midst of its 35,000 acres; and the gardens of lesser mortals, among them Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West, both notable garden designers and writers. We see the designers of royal estates—among them, Henry Wise, William Kent, Humphrey Repton, and the greatest of all English gardeners, “Capability” Brown, who created the 150-acre lake of Blenheim Palace, earned millions annually, and designed more than 170 parks, many still in existence today. We learn how gardening became a major catalyst for innovation (central heating came from experiments to heat greenhouses with hot-water pipes); how the new iron industry of industrializing Britain supplied a myriad of tools (mowers, pumps, and the boilers that heated the greenhouses); and, finally, Floud explores how gardening became an enormous industry as well as an art form in Britain, and by the nineteenth century was unrivaled anywhere in the world.

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

A new edition of the leading textbook on the economic history of Britain since industrialization. Combining the expertise of more than thirty leading historians and economists, Volume 2 tracks the development of the British economy from late nineteenth-century global dominance to its early twenty-first century position as a mid-sized player in an integrated European economy. Each chapter provides a clear guide to the major controversies in the field and students are shown how to connect historical evidence with economic theory and how to apply quantitative methods. The chapters re-examine issues of Britain's relative economic growth and decline over the 'long' twentieth century, setting the British experience within an international context, and benchmark its performance against that of its European and global competitors. Suggestions for further reading are also provided in each chapter, to help students engage thoroughly with the topics being discussed.

This pioneering study tells the story of the emergence of rural workers' gardens during a period of unprecedented economic and social change in the most dynamic and prosperous region of Scotland. Much criticised as weed-infested, badly cultivated and disfigured by the dung heap before the cottage door, eighteenth-century cottage gardens produced only the most basic food crops. But the paradox is that Scottish professional gardeners at this time were highly prized and sought after all over the world. And by the eve of the First World War Scottish cottage gardeners were raising flowers, fruit and a wide range of vegetables, and celebrating their successes at innumerable flower shows. This book delves into the lives of farm servants, labourers, weavers, miners and other workers living in the countryside, to discover not only what vegetables, fruit and flowers they grew, and how they did it, but also how poverty, insecurity and long and arduous working days shaped their gardens. Workers' cottage gardens were also expected to comply with the needs of landowners, farmers and employers and with their expectations of the industrious cottager. But not all the gardens were muddy cabbage and potato patches and not all the gardeners were ignorant or unenthusiastic. The book also tells the stories of the keen gardeners who revelled in their pretty plots, raised prize exhibits for village shows and, in a few cases, found gardening to be a stepping-stone to scientific exploration.

The industrial revolution of Britain is recognized today as a model for industrialization all over the world. Now with a new introduction by the author, this book is widely renowned as a classic text for students of this key period.

Finalist for the 2024 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction Finalist for the 2024 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing A #1 Sunday Times (UK) Bestseller A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An Oprah Daily Summer Reading Recommendation Inspired by the restoration of her own garden, "imaginative and empathetic critic" (NPR) Olivia Laing embarks on an exhilarating investigation of paradise. In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore an eighteenth-century walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work brought to light a crucial question for our age: Who gets to live in paradise, and how can we share it while there’s still time? Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change. The result is a humming, glowing tapestry, a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of gardens: not as a place to hide from the world but as a site of encounter and discovery, bee-loud and pollen-laden.

This book explores the ways in which the lives and routines of a wide range of people across different parts of Europe and the wider world were structured and played out through everyday practices. It focuses on the detail of individual lives and how these were shaped by spaces and places, by movement and material culture – both the buildings they occupied and the objects they used in their everyday lives. Drawing on original research by a range of established and emerging scholars, each chapter peers into the lives of people from various social groups as they went about their daily lives, from citizens on the streets to aristocrats at home in their country houses, and from the urban elite at leisure to seamen on board ships bound for the East Indies. For all these people, daily routines were important in structuring their lives, giving them a rhythm that was knowable and meaningful in its temporal regularity, be that daily, weekly, or seasonal. So too were their everyday encounters and relationships with other people, within and beyond the home; these shaped their practices, movements, and identities and thus served to mould society in a broader sense.

This collection brings together primary sources on gardens and gardening across the long nineteenth-century. Economic expansion, empire, the growth of the middle classes and suburbia, the changing role of women and the professionalisation of gardening, alongside industrialisation and the development of leisure and mass markets were all elements that contributed to and were influenced by the evolution of gardens. It is a subject that is both global and multidisciplinary and this set provides the reader with a variety of ways in which to read gardens – through recognition of how they were conceived and experienced as they developed. Material is primarily derived from Britain, with Europe, USA, Australia, India, China and Japan also featuring, and sources include the gardening press, the broader press, government papers, book excerpts and some previously unpublished material.