Garden writing

Writing about gardens takes a variety of literary forms, ranging from instructional manuals on horticulture and garden design, to essays on gardening, to novels. Garden writing has been published in English since at least the 16th century.

Atkinson suggests a two-part division of garden writing, at least in the 19th century. On the one hand, she notes, some garden writers produced utilitarian guides on garden maintenance and horticulture. On the other hand, garden writing also included higher-brow works on the "pleasures of landscape aesthetics".^[1]

British garden writers are just about able to cover differences in regional climates with the odd reference to "hilly" or "northern" districts, and issue general advice for the whole country; the great majority are based in Southern England. This polite fiction is not tenable for the US and Canada, and much garden writing is regional, taking into account the very different ranges of temperature and rainfall.