❀The Garden Handbook

Old gardens, growing again.

We discover, augment and publish the great gardening books of another age — rose culture and flower gardening, four-volume dictionaries of horticulture, and the great herbals of Gerard and Culpeper — often from rare, out-of-print books, and even unpublished manuscripts.

Plants have not changed; the advice still works. We publish every book whole — beautiful plates included — with our commentary clearly marked, findable and free for every gardener.

12 books · free to read

Did you know?

The 1908 grand tour of great houses runs from the Taj Mahal to Mount Vernon — with the gardens getting equal billing.

— Historic Houses and Their Gardens, 1908

Gerard's Herball (1597) ends with a tree said to fruit live geese — reported as sober botany.

— Gerard's Herball, 1927

Culpeper's herbal assigns every plant to a planet — rosemary belongs to the sun, and your medicine depended on it.

— Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, 1653

We hold four separate antique books devoted purely to growing roses. The Edwardians did not consider this excessive.

— How To Grow Roses

Victorian gardeners had a four-volume illustrated dictionary just for gardening — and a separate encyclopedia for horticulture.

— The Illustrated Dictionary of Gardening, 1884

The Books, Shelf by Shelf

12 books in this collection, shelved the way a good bookshop would do it. The book's cover is the door; you are invited to walk in anywhere.

The Great Herbals (3 books)·Roses (2 books)·The Flower Garden (3 books)·The Gardener's References (2 books)·Gardens Grand & Small (2 books)

The Great Herbals

Culpeper, Gerard and the old plant physic.

Roses

The queen of flowers, from bed to market.

The Flower Garden

Planning, planting and keeping the bloom.

The Gardener's References

The dictionaries and encyclopedias of the craft.

Gardens Grand & Small

Great gardens visited, whole gardens planned.