This book will provide a new perspective on the way we garden, why we garden and what it means for us.
Full of fascinating characters and vignettes – from ancient Greeks to suffragettes, from eccentric military men to Catholics in hiding from persecution – The Pursuit of Paradise looks into how society’s changes have altered our views of gardening, who does it, and how we do it. What drives people to risk their lives in search of a rare Himalayan flower? Why are so many gardeners homosexual? How did gardening become a respectable career for women? When did looking at other people’s gardens become a national British pastime?
Using particular gardens to lead into themes like power, refuge, female emancipation, distribution of wealth and fashion, Jane Brown presents a history of the nation through its most popular national pursuit. It will be essential reading for the horticulturally impassioned for years to come.
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Social changes have radically affected our view of gardening--who does it and how it is done. Brown traces these changes thematically from the links between gardens and art; fashion; pleasure; healing; science; even to war and military gardens. Rather than showing how gardening has simply reflected changes in society, Brown uses England's most popular pursuit to reflect these diverse social changes and historic trends. A multitude of historic and literary examples are seized upon to illustrate her lively argument. References move quickly from The Beano to Blenheim House, Barbara Cartland to Babylon, blending the literary, scientific, esoteric and popular in one breath. Though detailed and precise, the tone is wittily serious and wryly amusing with Brown's exuberance surfacing in descriptions such as here on the sight of pineapples growing in the rediscovered garden at Heligan in Cornwall: "There is something far more miraculous about this juicy yellow orb, with all its chin-dribbling lusciousness, emerging from the chill of a bleak Cornish frameyard and piles of dung, than about all the sun-drenched fruits jetted from afar daily to our supermarket shelves."
For the future Brown looks back to the healing comfort of plants, citing as an example Monty Don's Snowdrop Garden at Wythenshawe Hospital designed for parents who have lost a child. Allied with this is a fascination with Zen Buddhist gardens promising contemplative fulfilment and of, above all, the boom in organic gardening which will ensure that we and our gardens will be in a healthier state than ever. This lovely book interestingly and wittily makes us aware of the ancient and colourful lineage of which we are a part. Venerating England's most popular pastime in the remembrance that "it is this, the simplest and yet most precious combination of us and our soil that bonds us in the pursuit of paradise, will all who have gone before and those yet to come." --Rachel O'Connor
‘A fresh and beautifully illustrated account of gardeners’
ideals and their realisations... Open it at any page and one is hooked’
Natasha Spender, Daily Mail
‘The most enchanting, erudite and thought-provoking book on the subject to be published for many years’
Amanda Craig, Independent on Sunday
‘Completely absorbing’
Peter Parker, Daily Telegraph
‘A series of idiosyncratic, delightfully informative and elegantly written essays...
‘This year’s ideal Christmas present for the literate gardener’
Sir Roy Strong, Sunday Express
‘A genuinely important contribution, not just to understanding gardens of the past, but to how we might get the most pleasure from the gardens of the future’
Montagu Don, Observer
‘If you want to be impressively well-informed about why every self-respecting home must have a patio, or why delphiniums, gladioli and larkspur are distinctly passé, then latch on to this illuminating book’
Penelope Lively, Mail on Sunday
‘Be warned. This is a rich brew, not to be taken in one gulp. Gardening in this book encompasses science and history, philosophy and art, literature and the military, politics and sex... it is all tremendous fun’
Ruth Gorb, Guardian
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