• A ground-breaking collection of new perspectives on garden history
• Essays demonstrate the extent of our knowledge of how the natural world looked and how humans related to their environment
• The book's broad coverage includes botany and herbals, literary reflections of changing ideas of landscape and nature, and human's place within it
• Contributors come from a wide range of experts, including archaeologists, scholars and the librarian and archivist to the Royal Horticultural Society
• Reflects the growing emergence of this field, which has been assisted both by archaeology and ideas from green studies and environmental criticism
• Richly illustrated throughout

Alexander Samson lectures on early modern Spain and Latin America at University College London. He is also the co-director of the Centre for Early Modern Exchanges. His research interests include Anglo-Spanish intercultural exchange, the marriage of Philip II and Mary Tudor, and the Golden Age comedia. He is the editor of The Spanish Match: Prince Charles’s Journey to Madrid, 1623 (2006) and A Companion to Lope de Vega (with Jonathan Thacker, 2008).