From Library Journal
Librarian and archivist of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), Elliott (Victorian Gardens) presents spectacular examples of five centuries of botanical illustration taken from drawings and printed works in the RHS's collection. These are organized into five chapters corresponding to the five great sources of garden plants: Europe, the Turkish Empire, Africa, the Americas, and Asia and Australasia. Elliott introduces each chapter with a description of how the influx of new flowers from each area was incorporated into gardens and gardening design in Britain. His brief text for each of the beautiful, oversize illustrations focuses on the plants themselves; how and when they were first discovered, described, and named; how they were used; and how their popularity waxed and waned. This book makes no attempt to be a history of botanical illustration; indeed, the one flaw is that the sources of the illustrations are relegated to a list at the back of the book. The book concludes with a useful essay on plant names through history and short biographies of the illustrators. Recommended for all larger gardening collections. Daniel Starr, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Booklist
At first glance, this gorgeous volume appears to be an art book, but the nature of its art, hundreds of superior botanical illustrations reaching back several centuries and chronicling nearly 500 years of plant exploration and horticultural experimentation, defines it as a work of science history. Elliott, librarian and archivist at the Royal Horticultural Society, focuses not on plant hunters but on the plants themselves, summarizing stories of a botanical diaspora that changed the flora of Europe and the style and mission of gardens. The "first great wave of plant introductions" arrived in Western Europe from Turkey in the mid-sixteenth century, bringing hyacinths and tulips. The Americas were also a fertile source for flowering plants such as sunflowers and zinnias, and floras from Africa (crinums), Asia (irises and chrysanthemums), and Australia (banksias) were embraced with equal fervor. Each precise yet expressive illustration is accompanied by a capsule history of the plant's introduction, reception, and use, and the reader is left in awe of nature's endless variations on the themes of beauty, adaptation, and procreation. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
