The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obession - Paperback

by Andrea Wulf (Author)

A fascinating look at the men who made Britain the center of the botanical world--from the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature.

"Wulf's flair for storytelling is combined with scholarship, brio, and a charmingly airy style.... A delightful book--and you don't need to be a gardener to enjoy it." --The New York Times Book Review

Bringing to life the science and adventure of eighteenth-century plant collecting, The Brother Gardeners is the story of how six men created the modern garden and changed the horticultural world in the process. It is a story of a garden revolution that began in America.

In 1733, colonial farmer John Bartram shipped two boxes of precious American plants and seeds to Peter Collinson in London. Around these men formed the nucleus of a botany movement, which included famous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus; Philip Miller, bestselling author of The Gardeners Dictionary; and Joseph Banks and David Solander, two botanist explorers, who scoured the globe for plant life aboard Captain Cook's Endeavor. As they cultivated exotic blooms from around the world, they helped make Britain an epicenter of horticultural and botanical expertise. The Brother Gardeners paints a vivid portrait of an emerging world of knowledge and gardening as we know it today.

Author Biography

ANDREA WULF was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She trained as a design historian at London's Royal College of Art . She is also the author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World and Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation and is coauthor (with Emma Gieben-Gamal) of This Other Eden: Seven Great Gardens and 300 Years of English History. She has written for The Sunday Times (London), the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, and she reviews for numerous newspapers, including The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Mail on Sunday. She appears regularly on BBC television and radio. The Brothers Gardeners was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2008.