[ANONYMOUS]

A rare, most interesting, and finely illustrated Elizabethan work on gardening much enlarged from its original which first appeared in 1594. The first and major part of the work concerns fruit trees and in particular techniques for grafting. “In early modern England, heredity was a more flexible concept than our own. Grafting was one of a number of well-known techniques on manipulating inheritance in fruit trees. Mid 17th-century gardening books, such as Ralph Austin’s ‘Treatise of fruit trees’, Leonard Meager’s ‘English gardener’, and William Lawson’s ‘New Orchard and Garden’, all devote considerable space to such methods and techniques. ‘The Expert Gardener’ explains how to use grafting to alter the nature of fruit. Grafting using a preparation of ox tongue will produce fruit without stones. Dipping the sprout or scion into pikes blood will make the fruit turn red, as will grafting onto an alder stump. Boring a hole in the tree trunk and filling it with honey will make fruits sweet on a tree that formally bore sour fruit. As this text summarises it is better to graft to like, but if the reader ‘try divers kindes, he may see and make many wonders’.” Mary Elizabeth Fissell. “One of the handbooks that prioritizes grafting as its main subject is the anonymous manual .. ‘The Expert Gardener’, .. subtitled as “Containing Certaine necessarie, secret, and ordinarie knowledges in Grafting and Gardening.” The subtitle, alongside the “expert” in the .. title suggests that this text sets out to convey valuable secret knowledge that will teach its readers to gain mastery over Nature. The Expert Gardener focuses on the best way for the gardener to control generation, explaining that “all graffing and imping is done by putting one into another…so it may become one tree.” Emphasizing the gardener’s active putting “one” into “another,” this text suggests the separation of these botanical bodies, prior to the gardener’s generative act that makes them “one tree.”” Claire McEwen Duncan. The first part also work contains guidance on many aspects of fruit trees, from how “to preserve and keepe Fruit”, when to pick, and to advice for dealing with pests such as “tree worms”, “a remedy against Caterpillers” etc..

This is followed by a section entitled “A short instruction very profitable and necessary for all that delight in gardening” with advice on when to plant vegetables and how to deal with pests in the garden such as “Snailes”, moles etc. This is then followed by 22 full page illustrations of gardening instruments but mostly of designs for formal ‘knot’ gardens including a design for a garden maze.

A very good copy of this practical work written with much charm and still eminently readable. It was reissued together with other works as part of the ‘The Countryman’s Recreation’, (STC 5874).