Andrea Wulf The Brother Gardeners Reading

(5 stars; 1 reviews)

Andrea Wulf The Brother Gardeners Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession 1/5. The Merchant's Tale. Andrea Wulf explores the botanical revolution of the 18th century that was seeded by explorers, collectors and plant dealers. 2/5. The Peckham Prototype. In Peter Collinson 's ordered garden, many of Britain's favourite flowers first bloomed. Andrea Wulf 's book asks how Britain became a nation of gardeners. 3/5. The Naming of Plants. Linnaeus sends his brightest student to London to name the bizarre plants flooding in from the American colonies.  4/5. "Ye Who O'er Southern Oceans Wander" Joseph Banks heads south in the Endeavour on the greatest botanical journey of all time, while the American plant collectors are disturbed by the unwanted atttentions of the Native Americans.  5/5. Loves of the Plants. Joseph Banks galvanises army officers, merchants, diplomats and missionaries to dispatch home to Kew any unusual plant they happen upon across the vast British Empire as Britain goes garden mad. Book of the Week First broadcast: Mon 24th Mar 2008, 09:45 on BBC Radio 4 FM Read By: Hilary Neville Abridged By: Libby Spurrier. Producer: Matt Thompson —— One January morning in 1734, cloth merchant Peter Collinson hurried down to the docks at London’s Custom House to collect cargo just arrived from John Bartram, his new contact in the American colonies. But it was not reels of wool or bales of cotton that awaited him, but plants and seeds… Over the next forty years, Bartram would send hundreds of American species to England, where Collinson was one of a handful of men who would foster a national obsession and change the gardens of Britain forever, introducing lustrous evergreens, fiery autumn foliage and colourful shrubs. They were men of wealth and taste but also of knowledge and experience like Philip Miller, author of the bestselling Gardeners Dictionary, and the Swede Carl Linnaeus, whose standardised botanical nomenclature popularised botany as a genteel pastime for the middle-classes; and the botanist-adventurer Joseph Banks and his colleague Daniel Solander who both explored the strange flora of Tahiti and Australia on the greatest voyage of discovery of modern times, Captain Cook’s Endeavour. This is the story of these men – friends, rivals, enemies, united by a passion for plants – whose correspondence, collaborations and squabbles make for a riveting human tale which is set against the backdrop of the emerging empire, the uncharted world beyond and London as the capital of science. From the scent of the exotic blooms in Tahiti and Botany Bay to the gardens at Chelsea and Kew, and from the sounds and colours of the streets of the City to the staggering vistas of the Appalachian mountains, The Brother Gardeners tells the story of how Britain became a nation of gardeners. [Goodreads]

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.