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Garden Historian Andrea Wulf Presents an Illustrated Lecture on her New Book: The Brother Gardeners

Presented by Academy of Natural Sciences at Academy of Natural Sciences

April 29, 2009

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In this beautifully illustrated talk, Andrea Wulf tells the story of a small group of 18th century naturalists that made England a nation of gardeners. It begins when American farmer John Bartram sent hundreds of boxes filled with seeds to England, and includes Philip Miller, author of the Gardeners Dictionary, the cantankerous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, and two passengers on Captain Cook's Endeavour, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander. Together, these men introduced lustrous evergreens, fiery autumn foliage, and colorful shrubs that shaped the Georgian landscape. They also brought science and rational thought to horticulture. As friends, rivals, and enemies, their correspondence, collaborations, and squabbles make for a riveting human drama set against the backdrop of the emerging British Empire and America's magnificent forests. As botany and horticulture became a science, the garden became the Eden for everyman.