Gardens Abound in Library of Virginia Special Collections

As you tour the gardens of Virginia during Historic Garden Week, you may be inspired to plan your own garden or learn more about the fine art of gardening. Fortunately, the Library of Virginia’s Special Collections have a wide variety of rare books to inspire you. From volumes on garden planning and architecture to beautiful horticultural guides, you can expand your knowledge of historic gardens, gardening, and botany with a visit to our collections.

Your tour begins with the plants themselves. The Library has many beautifully illustrated rare books that detail plants and their use in kitchen gardens, medicinal gardens, and pleasure gardens. These plant guides, known as “herbals,” provide a fascinating look into early gardening and the different ways people grew their own ingredients. An early example is 1798’s A complete herbal of the late James Newton, M.D.: containing the prints and the English names of several thousand trees, plants, shrubs, flowers, exotics, &c., many of which are not to be found in the herbals of either Gerard, Johnson, or Parkinson. The illustrations in this herbal are tiny line drawings of flowers, trees, herbs, and fruits, featuring incredible detail showing the beauty of the plants.

From very simple to very elaborate illustration, the beautifully illustrated journal Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London, published from 1812 to 1848, contains stunning full-color drawings of plants and their features. The Library has ten volumes that cover many topics relating to gardening and growing plants, including fruits and vegetables and flowers. Use these volumes to learn more about the flowers you have seen in your garden journey.

Now that you know everything about plants, it’s time to arrange them into a garden. The Library’s collection of gardening books will help you cultivate herb, kitchen, and pleasure gardens, from very simple to elaborate English-style gardens. The theory and practice of gardening : wherein is fully handled all that relates to fine gardens, commonly called pleasure-gardens, as parterres, groves, bowling-greens … : together with remarks and general rules in all that concerns the art of gardening by A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville from 1712 contains detailed plans for how to arrange your pleasure garden in classical style. Or, as explained in the full subtitle: Consisting of Parterres, Groves, Bowling-Greens, &c. containing several plans, and general dispositions of gardens, New Designs of Parterres, Groves, Grass-plots, Mazes, Banqueting-Rooms, Galleries, Portico’s, and Summer-houses of Arbour-work, Terrasses, Stairs, Fountains, Cascades, and other Ornaments of use in the Decoration and Embelishment of Gardens. With The Manner of making the Ground, forming Designs suitable to the Place, and putting them in Execution, according to the Principles of Geometry. The Method of Setting and Raising in little time, all the Plants requisite in fine Gardens: Also the Way to find Water, to convey it into Gardens, and to make Basons and Fountains for the same. Together with Remarks and General Rules in all that concerns the Art of Gardening. (yes, titles can be long). You will find inspiration for English-style gardens with many plans to use for layout inspiration.

If you want to venture even further back in time, you can find inspiration in 1656’s Paradisi in sole paradisvs terrestris.: Or, A choise garden of all sorts of rarest flowers, with their nature, place of birth, time of flowring, names, and vertues to each plant, useful in physick, or admired for beauty. To which is annext a kitchin-garden furnished with all manner of herbs, roots, and fruits, for meat or sawce used with us. With the art of planting an orchard, shewing the nature of grafting, inoculating, and pruning. Together with the right ordering, planting and preserving of them, with their select vertues, which was originally published (with a slightly different title) in 1629. Collected by John Parkinson, a master apothecary and the king’s herbalist, it contains guidelines for arranging gardens and information and illustrations of plants that can be used for them.

Finally, inspiration can be found in The landscape gardening and landscape architecture of the late Humphrey Repton; being his entire works on these subjects from 1814, which compiles five works on landscape gardening by Repton published from 1795 to 1816. Repton was the first person to describe himself as a landscape gardener and concentrated on the design of gardening and not the actual building of the gardens. He also had a unique style of creating overlays to show “before and after” views of his landscaping. These beautifully colored illustrations help visualize how a garden can transform a landscape.

Historic Garden Week is only seven days, but the books in the Library of Virginia’s Special Collections are available year-round. To learn more about historic gardens or botany, the Library has plenty of inspiration.