We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,593,345.41 | Books Available: 791,523 | Members Online: 214

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - The Head Gardeners

The Head Gardeners
Author: Toby Musgrave

Angus McAllister, the iron-willed ruler of the gardens at Blanding's Castle who reduced his employer, Lord Emsworth, to abject pleading when he threatened to resign, and Sir Joseph Paxton, designer of the Crystal Palace, are just two examples, one fictional, one historical, of an extraordinary group of men who fluorished in the golden age of the... more » British country house in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Toby Musgrave shows, the great head gardeners enjoyed a status and an importance that extended far beyond the walled frontiers of their fiefdoms. Only the very best of the uneducated country lads who were taken on as garden boys survived the apprenticeship of up to fifteen years, but those that did were men of strong character who had educated themselves in the sciences of botany, etymology, plant breeding, plant physiology, surveying, perspective drawing and much else. As well as ensuring that the great houses were supplied with flowers, fruit and vegetables the year round - pineapples by the dozens, peaches and apricots by the thousand were harvested from their greenhouses - they learned to cultivate the host of exotic plants that their employers imported from the ends of the earth. They invented the trade of floristry. They wrote bestselling books and published the first gardening magazines. The fame and reputation of great houses and their owners depended upon the skills of the head gardeners and competition for their services could be intense. Some tyrannised their employers to the extent that they durst not pick a flower or pluck a fruit for fear of the head gardener's displeasure. Others, like Paxton, became the friends and confidants of those who paid their wages. They ran what were, in effect, large horticultural businesses which might employ fifty or more staff and have annual expenditures that would run into the millions in today's currency.. In this scholarly and highly entertaining book, Toby Musgrave rescues the head gardeners from the backwaters of horticultural history and restores them to their rightful place as the founders of their profession. This is a fascinating study of the great Victorian and Edwardian head gardeners, a remarkable group of self-made men who transformed gardening from menial labour into a profession. It recreates the social world of the great country house gardens where staffs of up to fifty might be employed in growing produce of awe-inspiring variety in prodigious quantities. It reveals that it was the head gardeners of the past who were largely responsible for creating the science of horticulture as we know it today.

ISBN-13: 9781845132835
ISBN-10: 1845132831
Publication Date: 9/25/2007
Pages: 256
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Aurum Press Ltd
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Back to the Top ↑

Search - The Head Gardeners

Loading...