Mrs Beeton Gardening Management

Isabella Beeton was born in 1836, the eldest of twenty-one children, and died at the age twenty-eight. Despite the shortness of her life she managed to produce not only her world-famous book of Household Management but also this lesser known but equally comprehensive book of Garden Management. The subjects covered are familiar to all those who read modern journalism and books on gardening or watch gardening programmes on television: soil structures, manures and compost, planning and landscaping, walls and fences, ornamental features, tools, sowing, planting and transplanting. There are chapters on trees, shrubs, flowers, vegetables, herbs and fruit growing; on frames and glasshouses; and finally twelve chapters covering the gardening year. Mrs Beeton first published Household Management and Garden Management in the 186s at a time when Victorian middle-class families had money to spend but little or no previous experience of owning or managing houses and gardens. Mrs Beeton’s guidance proved extremely useful and popular. Her information and wisdom were so sound that many of her precepts remained ‘rules’ well into the middle of the twentieth century. Mrs Beeton’s Garden Management is not only packed with horticultural advice on the use of traditional methods – always with an eye to new ideas – but it is also a social document providing an insight into the art of gardening as it was so enthusiastically practised in the past.