This illuminating collection presents the lives and gardens of the early modern figures that laid the foundation of horticultural study.

Collating the personal writings of John Goodyer, John Tradescant the Elder, and their contemporaries, R. T. Gunther’s commentary highlights the ways in which gardens served as both physical spaces for experimentation and symbolic sites for the production of horticultural knowledge, long before the formalisation of botanical science.

Set within the broader context of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Early British Botanists is an essential resource for anyone with an interest in heritage gardens, the evolution of plant collecting, and the foundations of botanical knowledge in the British Isles.