Market gardening is the Cinderella of garden history, yet was an important source of food for many in England and deserves greater study.
Market gardening is the Cinderella of garden history, yet was an important source of food for many in England and deserves greater study. This book gives an outline of market gardening around London before 1800, and considers the role of commercial vegetable production in stimulating kitchen gardening generally, and its influence on the wider agricultural scene. As focus to its theme, it narrates the story of one small area of early market gardening, the Neat House Gardens in Westminster; drawing on MSS from the Grosvenor estate for new and arresting information.
The Neat House Gardens sets its subject, perhaps the most productive 200 acres of land in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, into the wider context of horticulture and food supply in the London area, and will be of general interest to agrarian historians as well as those with specific interests in food supply and the capital.
This book thus extends far beyond an obscure corner of seventeenth-century London to demand the attention of the historian.
