GARDEN DIARY OF DOCTOR DARWIN

Written between 1838 and 1865 by the father of Charles Darwin, Doctor Robert Darwin, and after Robert's death in 1848 continued by Charles's sister Susan, this hitherto unknown garden diary was a chance discovery. Susan Campbell made the discovery in 1986 and spent the next 35 years researching its background before writing this book. It describes the horticultural and domestic activities at The Mount, a large house with extensive and beautiful gardens and pastures on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury. It was the home of the Darwin family from 1800 until Susan's death in 1866 and, in 1809, it was Charles's birthplace. It was in the seven acres that Charles climbed trees and learned to observe animals and plants, watched his mother keep doves and where he and his older brother set up a chemistry laboratory in the tool shed. The garden was designed by his parents Susannah Darwin (born into the Wedgwood family) and her physician husband Robert and took shape soon after their marriage in 1796. The garden included many striking features including a 680 foot long terrace walk, a steep river cliff, a large circular flower garden, and facilities for supplying the house with seasonable fruit and vegetables, as well as specialities like winter cucumbers and hot house delicacies such as pineapples and bananas. The great virtue of this garden diary is that it brings the garden vividly to life and the book is written by an internationally acknowledged garden historian and illustrator known for her writings on walled kitchen gardens. The book evokes the constant routines of planning, planting, pruning, mowing and harvesting, of the traffic between kitchen and garden, servants, family and friends, and with cosmic events such as the sight of Donati's Comet across the sky in 1858 witnessed, but what really matters is the passing of the seasons. A really beautifully designed volume with border decoration line art, beautiful typography, lists reproduced as were pencilled on sheets of paper watermarked 1858, lists of plants grown in the hothouse, stove-houses and vinery, the hybrid perpetuals and a month-by-month calendar of jobs and planting such as a new brick melon frame which took almost the whole of February 1844 to complete and the planting of mint, angelica and thyme, potatoes and rhubarb being forced in the frame and capsicums, mustard and cress and tomatoes sown. Outside sowings include parsley, lettuces, radishes, cauliflowers, turnips and more peas, beans, carrots and celery and the asparagus and strawberry beds are manured and the ground prepared for carrots. Full page colour photos, colour scale drawings on endpapers, modern colour photos, this is a very special garden history from a Victorian plus a modern gardener's viewpoint. 320 glamorous pages, 19.7 x 24.1cm. Colour.