The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise

OLIVIA LAING

(PICADOR, 336 PP, £20)
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The sixteenth-century writer, astrologer and physiognomist Thomas Hill is credited with writing the first British book on gardening. Entitled The Profitable Arte of Gardening, and published around 1558, it was so successful that Hill lengthened it from 42 pages to 68 before republishing it in 1563.