Biblio-botany: early modern gardens in print and material culture

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• Liz White (Department of History and Philosophy of Science)
• Monday 24 November 2025, 13:00-14:00
• Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

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The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries bore witness to a delicate symbiosis between books and plants. New printing technology meant that information could be disseminated to a generation for whom botany was emerging as a discipline of its own, not merely as a subcategory of medicine. Herbals by the likes of Brunfels, Fuchs, Dodoens, Mattioli and Gerard were popular compendia for all manner of domestic uses, and their woodcut images, powerful surrogates for the plants which were difficult to transport from country to country. During this period of experimentation and discovery, gardening became an ‘art’ which could bring one closer to God, the very first gardener. Botanical imagery and horticultural metaphor suffused all areas of public and domestic life, including literature, stagecraft, needlework, religion and politics. Gardens both as ideas and as physical spaces formed vital centres of socio-economic life in Renaissance England, functioning as sites of storytelling and scandal, politics and poetry, profits and pleasures.

This talk is part of the Cabinet of Natural History series.

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