The Medieval Garden (Paperback) /anglais - Softcover

LANDSBERG SYLVIA

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0714105902 ISBN 13: 9780714105901

Publisher: BRITISH MUSEUM, 1998

Synopsis

As well as food and medicine, the medieval garden provided pleasure, repose and refreshment to the senses. From detailed manuscript descriptions and illustrations, this work presents a picture of the various styles of medieval garden from the small enclosed herber to vast cultivated parks of royalty and nobility. The author combines her historical knowledge with practical experience of re-creating medieval gardens in various sites in England, explaining how she designed Queen Eleanor's garden at Winchester and Brother Cadfael's physic garden at Shrewsbury. She gives detailed descriptions of layouts, measurements, the types of tools required and the medieval gardener's calendar illustrated in the 12 "occupations of the months". The book also offers practical advice to readers on how to create typical medieval features in their gardens, such as a turf-covered brick bench, a rose- or vine-covered trellis, or a wild flower meadow.

About this title

About the Author

Sylvia Landsberg is a garden historian and lecturer and has re-created several twelth to sixteenth-century gardens.

From Library Journal

How does one write about gardens that no longer exist? Landsberg, a garden historian and lecturer who has designed several 13th to 16th century-style gardens, re-creates medieval gardens by analyzing contemporary manuscripts and art, the results of recent archaeological studies, and the few remaining fragments of gardens and surviving horticultural practices from that period. She includes dozens of reproductions of medieval illuminated manuscripts, paintings, etchings, and woodcuts to illustrate gardens from the time of Charlemagne to the beginning of Renaissance gardens in England. These are fleshed out with hypothetical plans and diagrams pieced together from documentary sources, poetry, and texts on cookery, medicine, and social life. The lists of plants included in the gardens are deduced from the visual evidence but are mainly taken from the work of John Harvey (e.g., Medieval Gardens, 1982) who unambiguously equated almost every medieval plant name with plants still available. The last third of the book discusses re-creating medieval gardens and provides a list of gardens to visit, some of them designed by the author. Recommended for all gardening history collections.?Daniel Starr, Museum of Modern Art Lib., New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: BRITISH MUSEUM
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0714105902
• ISBN 13: 9780714105901
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 144