Isabella Beeton was born in 1836, the eldest of
twenty-one children, and died at the age twenty-eight.
Despite the shortness of her life she managed to produce
not only her world-famous book of Household Management
but also this lesser known but equally comprehensive
book of Garden Management. The subjects covered are
familiar to all those who read modern journalism and
books on gardening or watch gardening programmes on
television: soil structures, manures and compost,
planning and landscaping, walls and fences, ornamental
features, tools, sowing, planting and transplanting.
There are chapters on trees, shrubs, flowers,
vegetables, herbs and fruit growing; on frames and
glasshouses; and finally twelve chapters covering the
gardening year. Mrs Beeton first published Household
Management and Garden Management in the 1860s at a time
when Victorian middle-class families had money to spend
but little or no previous experience of owning or
managing houses and gardens. Mrs Beeton's guidance
proved extremely useful and popular. Her information and
wisdom were so sound that many of her precepts remained
'rules' well into the middle of the twentieth
century.Mrs Beeton's Garden Management is not only
packed with horticultural advice on the use of
traditional methods - always with an eye to new ideas -
but it is also a social document providing an insight
into the art of gardening as it was so enthusiastically
practised in the past. |
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