The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession Book

What a pleasure this book was for me. It worked on me like a tonic. I get spring fever every year about this time and I guess I've already seen all the "how-to" garden books at our library 'cos none of them seem to tell me anything new anymore. (I can still hear my 3rd grade teacher's words reverberating in my head,"Yes dear, but if you would only APPLY what you learn..."). So this book came along at the perfect time for me. I want to eat, sleep, and talk of nothing but gardening, I love history and always like to learn how things happen. This is an excellently well written non-fiction account of how England became a country of gardeners. It's a exciting story believe it or not and full of all kinds of colorful people, some of whom you may have known, others unfairly lost to history until now. What adventures they had! What naughtiness they succumbed to! And of course they're are so many fabulous plants and trees to learn the stories of. Some of them have the most fascinating stories. And yall go ahead and sit down for this next bit. I am considering buying myself a copy. Yep, ya heard me right. It'll make such a great reference book. I learned so much about the classification systems and how they developed. P.S. If you think you know the story of The Mutiny on the Bounty, think again. It's all here, it wasn't at all what the movies make you think. It was all about plants!
P.S. (again) I was so sorry to see this one coming to an end, I reserved another of Andrea Wulf's books, Founding Gardeners. It's about the American Founding Fathers and what gardening, horticulture and all that meant to them. Alot of that was in Brother Gardeners but now we get all the delicious detail. Sigh, swoon, repeat.