Garden Cities: the phrase is redolent of Arts and Crafts values and nineteenth-century utopianism. But despite being the culmination of a range of influential movements, and having global influence themselves, in fact there were only ever two true, self-contained Garden Cities in England - far more numerous were Garden Suburbs and Villages. Crystallised in England by planning visionary Ebenezer Howard and executed largely by Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, the movement arose from nineteenth-century settlements like Port Sunlight (and, earlier, Saltaire and Akroyden), and also from the City...

The Victorian period has been described as the 'Great Age of Death'. The customs of death, notably burial and mourning, were taken very seriously and elaborate rituals of commemoration were part of everyone's lives. As demand grew for hygienic and dignified burial places, the humble parish graveyard - unable to cope - was joined by a newcomer to the landscape, the garden cemetery. Sarah Rutherford tells the story of Victorian cemeteries in their many guises, of the variation in their size, design, planting and monuments, and how most of them survive to this day. Some, having been neglected,...

The Arts and Crafts Movement flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, espousing a return to simplicity, craftsmanship and beauty from the artifice and intensity of Victorian industry. While perhaps most famous for its architecture and furniture, garden design was fully encompassed within the Movement and Gertrude Jekyll, Edwin Lutyens, Inigo Triggs and Samuel Elgood were very influential figures. This exploration of the principles of the Arts and Crafts garden explains the inspiration applied from Stuart garden and cottage garden design, the wild gardens with winding...

Across the world hundreds of botanic gardens combine scientific research, conservation and beauty with public access, with Kew Gardens alone attracting around one million visitors a year. For centuries they have variously focused on cultivating medicinal and exotic plants, introducing lucrative crops such as tea and rubber to new countries, preserving international plant collections, scientific classification and research - or have combined all these things. Sarah Rutherford here tells their story from the 16th-century up to their long heyday in the last 200 years. She explains the gardens'...

One of the most remarkable men of the 18th century, Lancelot "Capability" Brown was known to many as "The Omnipotent Magician" who could transform unpromising countryside into beautiful parks that seemed to be only the work of nature. His list of clients included half the House of Lords, six Prime Ministers and even royalty. Although his fame has dimmed, visitors still enjoy many of his works today at National Trust properties such as Croome Park, Petworth, Berrington, Stowe, Wimpole, Blenheim Palace, Highclere Castle (location of the series Downton Abbey) and many more. This book...