Nature displaced, nature displayed : order and beauty in botanical gardens /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Johnson, Nuala
Imprint:London ; New York : I.B. Tauris, 2011.
Description:1 online resource.
Language:English
Subject:Botanical gardens -- Design.
Botanical gardens -- Design -- Case studies.
Case studies.
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/8691101
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:0857720007 (electronic bk.)
9780857720009 (electronic bk.)
1848857128
9781848857124
Notes:Description based on print version record.
Includes bibliographical references ([p. 251]-263) and index.
Other form:Original 1848857128 9781848857124
Review by Choice Review

A basic thesis of this book is that the form of 19th-century gardens originated in the interplay between explorations of the world's flora, advances in the classification of plants, tastes in design, and engineering innovation. As the title suggests, people cultivated plants from the wild and displayed them according to a taxonomic system. Gardens were a place where the beauty and diversity of plants and the landscape could be showcased. Using three examples, from Cambridge, Dublin, and Belfast, Johnson (Queen's Univ. Belfast, UK) investigated the interplay between science and aesthetics, research and education, and basic and applied approaches to science. These three gardens, all more or less contemporaneous, developed in different ways within the context of their institutions, their landscape, and the societies that they served. Johnson covers the histories of the gardens in detail, and explores some of the interesting facets related to their opening to the public and particularly to working people. Other highlights include the gardens' place in practical agriculture. That these large institutional gardens became the centers for plant exchange involving those from around the British Empire--tropical and temperate--is indisputable, but the fact that each was different in design and purpose is equally clear. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and above; general audiences. D. H. Pfister Harvard University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review