English Garden Eccentrics

A highly original study of eccentric English garden-makers who, between the early seventeenth and the early twentieth centuries, created intensely personal and idiosyncratic gardens. Three notable figures include the superstitious antiquary William Stukeley, the animal- and bird-loving Lady Read, and the celebrated master of Vauxhall Gardens, Jonathan Tyers, who created at his home at Denbies one of the gloomiest and most perverse anti-pleasure gardens in Georgian England. This lively and accessible book calls on gardeners today to learn from example and dare to be eccentric.