A Rage for Rock Gardening

A new edition of Nicola Shulman’s miniature masterpiece about the life of gardener Reginald Farrer A hundred years ago, there was a revolution in British gardening, as the garden changed from being a diversion of dukes to the hobby of millions. Few figures were more prominent in this renaissance than Reginald Farrer, whose passion for alpines, the most demanding of plants, would inspire generations with a love of flowers. He was the man who put a rockery in every back garden. Tormented by physical and emotional misfortune, Farrer was one of those ‘born to endless night’. Yet in the realm of horticulture his many faults were turned to advantages, and he became one of the great plant-hunters, collecting new species from the mountains of Tibet and China. Through the influence of his extraordinary books, Farrer did for English gardening what, half a century later, Elizabeth David would do for its cookery, changing everything forever.