The Brother Gardeners

The Brother Gardeners tells the story of how the English garden came into glorious maturity in the 18th century. But its focus is on the men (alas, almost no women) who brought that garden into being, constructing it to include seeds and plants from the American colonies, and eventually from Australia, South America, Asia, and Africa.

Wars are treated by the brothers as annoying obstacles to be overcome. Political divisions are ignored in order to keep governments friendly to plant transport.

Wulf does a superb job of bringing to life the personalities of the gardeners: Linnaeus, John Bartram, Joseph Banks and numerous others. They all work indefatigably, write each other reams of letters, bicker, fail and try again throughout this book, as they serve the goddess of botany.

Linnaeus, without whose organizing system the huge explosion of new species imported by England would not have been manageable, was not always treated well by his English and Swedish beneficiaries. John Bartram, the American farmer, sought out new species all over the colonies and sent them to England. As a result, American plants became essential to English gardens. Joseph Banks, who focused both his energies and his fortune on collecting plants, spread his passion for botanizing until it became an English mania, and promoted successfully the development of an English policy of plant distribution to and from its colonies.

By the end of the 18th century, Continental gardeners were clamoring to create English gardens rather than the other way around, as had been past practice, and New World plants grew abundantly throughout the Empire.

Wulf describes all this in winningly readable, impressively researched prose. Added benefits are the 18-page glossary of plants and an index which includes both Latin and common plant names. The whole book is a delight.

Published in the March 2019 Leaflet Volume 6, Issue 3.