Alton Bickler

The History-Changing Plants Alton Bickler

Gardens, in the way we understand them today, which is to say as either food sources or ways to beautify and/or protect our property, do historically date back quite a long time.

From the burgeoning of the parterre to Dutch tulipomania to the craze for rhododendrons, the author's book traces the making and remaking of the modern garden as it acquired features we now take for granted (the flower bed, the herbaceous border), as well as others that have become less familiar (the shrubbery, the rockery), and came full circle to welcome native species and cottage garden varieties long neglected in favour of the foreign and the new.