All my non-fiction can be seen as histories of one sort or another – of flowers, people, cultures, landscapes and gardens.
Looking for Mr Schwitters tracks the final years of the émigré artist Kurt Schwitters, who fled Nazi Germany in 1937, never to return home. Interned as an enemy alien by the British, he settled eventually in England’s Lake District, close to the author’s future home, accompanied by his young English lover.
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In 1621, fifty-six English women crossed the Atlantic in response to the Virginia Company of London’s call for maids ‘young and uncorrupt’ to make wives for the planters of its new colony in Virginia. The English had settled there just fourteen years previously and the company hoped to root its unruly menfolk to the land with ties of family and children.
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In this fascinating excursion into the world of flowers, horticultural historian Jennifer Potter turns her forensic attention to seven flowers that have inflamed hearts and minds in cultures around the world. The lotus, lily, sunflower, opium poppy, rose, tulip and orchid: each has shaped our world in a different way, and each has a story to tell that will take you by surprise.
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In seventeenth-century Britain, a new breed of ‘curious’ gardeners was pushing at the frontiers of knowledge and new plants were stealing into Europe from East and West. John Tradescant and his son were at the vanguard of this change – as gardeners, as collectors and above all as exemplars of an age that began in wonder and ended with the dawning of science.
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In Lost Gardens, we tread back in time to discover and recreate eight gardens – now forgotten and overgrown – as they would have been in their heyday. Each of these gardens offers a unique spyhole into the past, and each has a story to tell about the people who lived there and the kind of lives they led.
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A secret garden is a magical place – a quiet haven where we can take refuge from a hostile world, rediscover the thrills of childhood, or hide ourselves away for intimate encounters. In this unique book, novelist and garden writer Jennifer Potter invites you into the enchanted world of hidden retreats.
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