Gardens for Gloriana: Wealth, Splendour and Design in Elizabethan Gardens

Description

The formal gardens of Elizabethan England were among the glories of their age. Complementing the great houses of the day, they reflected the aspirations of their owners, whose greatest desire was to achieve success at Court and to delight the Queen. No leading courtier would be without his great house, no great house was complete without its garden. In this richly illustrated work, Jane Whitaker explores these gems of Elizabethan England, focusing on the gardens of the Queen and her leading courtiers. Drawing on the cultural and horticultural sources of the day, as well as evidence surviving on the ground, she recreates these lost gardens, revealing both the rich and Renaissance culture that underlay them and the sumptuous world of the Elizabethan aristocracy. The result is an evocation of one of the most opulent reigns in English history and an entertaining and informative study of one of the most interesting periods of garden history.

Jane Whitaker is a writer, lecturer and consultant on garden history. She holds a PhD in garden history from the University of Bristol, UK, and is co-author (with Timothy Mowl) of The Historic Gardens of Hampshire (2015).

Historian Jane Whitaker has mastered this material and presented it expertly and accessibly to an audience that will range from garden enthusiasts and tourists to students of Elizabethan literary texts ... Handsome to behold, the book is richly illustrated with numerous color plates. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals. * CHOICE * This is an important and timely book ... This is a rich and rewarding social and cultural history for the general reader, as much as for the garden history aficionado, seen through the prism of gardens and their makers ... Quite simply a triumph. * Garden History * Whitaker has a gift for elegantly synthesising large amounts of complex information ... Gardens for Gloriana is peopled with fascinating characters ... Whitaker is an engaging guide to the prodigy houses and now-lost gardens of the Elizabethan elite, while the appendix of plant names with which the book concludes is highly informative. * Literary Review * An entertaining and discriminating synthesis. * Country Life * A wonderful evocation of the lost horticultural Renaissance of Elizabethan England. The interweaving of historical and literary sources gives a new and entirely original perspective on these sumptuous gardens, most of which have disappeared. * Timothy Mowl, Emeritus Professor of History of Architecture and Designed Landscapes, University of Bristol *