An Economic History of the English Garden

Between 1883 and 1903, £144 billion (£400 million) was borrowed, representing about 40 per cent of the total national debt, while total local government expenditure was about half of all public spending.41 Just as the royal parks of the eighteenth century were built and maintained by higher and higher levels of government borrowing, so too were the

Other surveys have found that the older you are, and the richer you are, the more gardening you are likely to do. Six out of ten of those interviewed thought that spending money on plants was a good investment, and eight out of ten thought the garden was important for relaxing and entertaining; seven out of ten took pride in their gardens, although

Sarah Rutherford, ‘Landscapes for the Mind: English Asylum Designers, 1845–1914’, Garden History, 33 (2005), pp. 61–86.

London, as usual, did best of all. There, governments built and refurbished palaces, parks and gardens to uphold the dignity of the royal family. The money went to builders and contractors, artists, furniture makers, sculptors, plant nurserymen, landscape designers and gardeners. Much more was spent, in London and then throughout the country, both

the account book of Capability Brown, now owned by the Royal Horticultural Society and kept in the Lindley Library, which lists 125 of his clients during the period of his greatest success between 1761 and 1783.

The Horticultural Trades Association published a survey in 2006 that found that 55 per cent of respondents said that they enjoyed gardening a lot or a little. Enjoyment rose to 70 per cent among individuals aged fifty-five to sixty-four, from 25 per cent among those aged fifteen to seventeen.

Gardens are, in the main, a form of luxury.

Actually, as an unlikely saviour – the Heritage Lottery Fund – has found, over 57 per cent of the British population use their local park at least once a month and, for those with young children, it rises to 90 per cent.44 The fund is financed by Britain’s gamblers – perhaps the least well-off sector of the public – and has been spending millions e

current annual UK expenditure in nurseries and garden centres and on landscape contractors is over £11.4 billion, without including the amount we spend on gardeners, or the value of all our own labour or the cost of all the land that we use. For centuries we have been spending, and now continue to spend, far more on our gardens than almost anyone r