Why do gardens look the way they do? David Stuart turns the conventional view of garden history upside down and argues that it is the plants themselves that driven the evolution of the modern garden. From the ends of the earth - the outer reaches of the Ottoman Empire, China, Japan, the Americas - daring explorers brought new plants back to gardens across Europe (encountering hair-raising adventures along the way). The influx of exotica caused a frenzy hybridization, which in turn inspired gardeners to make room to show off the latest fritillary, delphinium or rose. In this entertaining and insightful book Stuart traces the making and remaking of the modern garden as it acquired features - such as the flower bed, the herbaceous border, the glasshouse - that we now take for granted, and came full circle to welcome native species and cottage garden varieties long neglected in favour of the foreign and the new. Stuart concludes that continued plant prospecting may prove essential to protecting botanic diversity and preserving species rapidly disappearing from the wild. Long shaped by plants, our gardens may now prove crucial to saving the plants themselves.

David Stuart is a biologist and botanist, and has been a nurseryman and a Times journalist. His books include Gardening with Antique Plants, Classic Plant Combinations, Plants from the Past, Shrubs and Small Trees, The Garden Triumphant: A Victorian Legacy and, most recently, Dangerous Gardens: The Plants that Changed our Lives (Frances Lincoln). He Lives in Edinburgh.