We tend to think of Botanic Gardens as being very much a western invention, and that the earliest ones were founded in northern Italy in the 16th century. Of course it all depends what you mean by a botanic garden, but there’s certainly an arguable case for saying that botanic gardens in the widest sense of the word – as large deliberately gathered large collections of plants – existed hundreds, indeed thousands of years, before the foundation of the botanic gardens of Padua, Pisa or Oxford.
The earliest example I can find of plants being deliberately hunted down and collected come from ancient Egypt around 1500 BC where two pharaohs were so proud of their achievements that they not only ordered the deliberate collecting of plants but put them on their temple walls.
Although he did not claim to be a gardener he wrote of “the repose and delight to be found in gardening” adding “probably there is no feeling in the human mind stronger than the love of gardening.”
We all have our favourite gardening books, whether for the quality of the illustrations, -usually the first thing one notices when flicking through – the quality of the writing – which takes more time to appreciate or perhaps for the style and approach the author takes. My favourite scores highly on all three counts, and I wasn’t surprised to find it was also a favourite of several other people when I ran a course about garden writing recently. Published in 1977 and in print ever since it’s The Pleasure Garden by Anne Scott-James and Osbert Lancaster, and if you haven’t read it I hope by the time you’ve finished this post you’ll rush out and buy it immediately.
The Garden History Blog 
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