Brought up among the extensive grounds of her family home at Didlington Hall in Norfolk, Alicia Amherst (1865–1941) was a keen gardener from an early age. Especially interested in socially beneficial gardening, she sat on the board of the Chelsea Physic Garden from 1900, encouraged the growing of smoke-resistant flowers in poor urban areas, and promoted the greater use of allotments and school gardens during the First World War. The product of four years' research, this learned and engaging work of horticultural history since Roman times was first published to great acclaim in 1895. It notably discusses the manuscript kept at Trinity College, Cambridge, of a fifteenth-century treatise in verse, The Feate of Gardening, which is the earliest existing account in English on the subject. Highly illustrated, Amherst's book also includes her annotated and chronological bibliography of printed works on gardening since 1516.