The Brother Gardeners
Andrea Wulf
One January morning in 1734, cloth merchant Peter Collinson hurried down to the docks at London's Custom House to collect cargo just arrived from John Bartram in the American colonies. But it was not bales of cotton that awaited him, but plants and seeds...
Over the next forty years, Bartram would send hundreds of American species to England, where Collinson was one of a handful of men who would foster a national obsession and change the gardens of Britain forever: Philip Miller, author of the bestselling Gardeners Dictionary; the Swede Carl Linnaeus, whose standardised botanical nomenclature popularised botany; the botanist-adventurer Joseph Banks and his colleague Daniel Solander who both explored the strange flora of Tahiti and Australia on Captain Cook's Endeavour.
This is the story of these men - friends, rivals, enemies, united by a passion for plants. Set against the backdrop of the emerging empire and the uncharted world beyond, The Brother Gardeners tells the story how Britain became a nation of gardeners.
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About Andrea Wulf
Reviews for The Brother Gardeners
Jenny Uglow
Sunday Telegraph
Rounded, generous and exhaustively researched ... She is very adept at telling a good story, and in the history and origins of gardening she has found the perfect vehicle ... An excellent, hugely entertaining and instructive tale, and Wulf tells it very well
Mark Cocker
The Guardian
Wondrous ... I have learned so much from her book
Jon Snow, Channel Four News A delightful book ... Remarkably vivid
Adrian Tinniswood Engrossing ... A gripping story, told here with grace and aplomb
Tim Richardson
Country Life
Wonderful ... A fascinating read
Steven Poole Fabulous ... What an incredible account of an amazing century
Kim Wilde A wondrous telling of the history of the very English love affair with gardens and growing things
Jon Snow, Channel Four News The Brother Gardeners is a delightful book. It brings the story of 18th-century gardening to life in a remarkably vivid way, and sheds new light on the personality clashes and prejudices which lay at the root of the Georgians' passion for plants
Adrian Tinniswood The Brother Gardeners were a group of men involved in the 18th-century quest for new plants, at a fascinating period in garden history. Andrea Wulf brings their personalities vividly to life in her thoroughly researched and lively account.
Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall