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…
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…
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…
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…