This is an exquisite celebration of quintessentially English gardens, showing how they tread a fine line between aesthetics and utility, wilderness and domestication.
In medieval times cottages, far from picturesque, were vital to their cultivator's self-sufficiency and were often surrounded by a yard mainly given over to livestock, but with a patch for vegetables and herbs. In the seventeenth century things began to change, the gentry started to build cottage-style houses, and aided by their servants assumed lives of mock-simplicity. Thus the English cottage garden has derived from two strands: the subsistence culture of the original cottagers and the romantic notions of the gentrifiers.
The authors escort us on a tour of the variety of medicinal and culinary herbs, the art of topiary, and a medley of flowers with their established blend of stunning photographs and informative and entertaining texts.
