Paradisi in Sole Re: HERB - period wedding flowers

[Jenne Heise]

> You realize, of course, Jadwiga, that you have now fallen prey to
> my cunning plan to have someone else buy the book first and then,
> oh, I don't know, maybe....post a review of it here so that we can
> all decide where to find enough pop can returnables for the money
> to buy our own copies? :)

Ok, ok. Actually, I'm a little panicky on this one all of a sudden,
because BN doesn't list it, Amazon lists it as out of print, and Borders
says they have it in stock... so buy your copy before it goes out of
print, kids!

_Garden of Pleasant Flowers_, John Parkinson. Dover Publications, 1991.
ISBN: 048626758X $19.95 from Borders.com

This is actually a facsimile of the 1629 book, _Paradisi in Sole,
Paradisus Terrestris, or a Garden of All Sorts of Pleasant Flowers_, which
appeared pseudo-anonymously (Paradisi in Sole, after all, means
Park-in-Sun). It's among the first printed gardening works, even if it is
slightly postperiod, and it's a great book. What you get for your 20 bucks
is a big, thick paperback with very clear reproductions of the engravings
(trust me, it is a facsimile, nobody in their right mind, even Dover would
go to the trouble of typesetting this-- that's the major disadvantage of 
the book, having to puzzle out the typesetting and spelling). 

This may also be one of the first 'modern' gardening books. Parkinson
divides his work into the flowergarden and the kitchengarden, and begins
each section with a discourse on general gardening. Then, he sets forth
the plants. Every plant he mentions (and he mentions a lot, giving
multiple varieties of each one) has an illustrating engraving, in a very
clear style, that makes it easy to identify, with a key at the bottom of
the engraving page. Each plant entry gives the place (where to plant it),
the time (when it grows), the names, and the 'virtues'-- not only what it
is good for, but how to prepare and use it. (Parkinson seems to have a
fetish for cooking vegetables in broth, for some reason, though.)

Some of the plants are definitely postperiod: Rohde in _The Scented
Garden_ tells us that the English mania for bulbs, especially tulips, is
17th century. Some of the variety of vegetables-- including New World
ones, like the yam (called the common potato, for some reason) and the
potato, are probably relatively recent imports; some of the orchard
varieties he lists may well be seventeenth century also. 

However, this is still a great resource for information about gardening in
the Renaissance, and as far as I'm concerned is also the 'Sears Wishbook'
of period gardening.... One imagines eager young housewives of the 1600s
scanning through it on rainy days, making their garden plans and seed
lists, and we might well do the same.

 Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise
jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
	"You wake up to realize your only friend... has never been 
         yourself or anyone who cared in the end..." -- Jewel Kilcher

============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.