
The Blossoming Bookshelf: 43 Classic Books on Gardens and Plants
A Treasury of Historic Garden Design, Plant Science, Flowers, Fruits, and CultivationBy W. Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll, J. G. Wood, E. T. Cook, R. M. Kellogg Co., Arthur William Knapp, F. M. Hexamer, L. H. Bailey, F. A. Waugh, H. Harold Hume, Albert H. Benson, Rose Georgina Kingsley, Rosalind Northcote, Thomas Shaw, Edith A. Browne, Carl Weschcke, Samuel Arnott, James O'Brien, Australia. Department of External Affairs, M. G. Kains, H. S. Adams, H. S. Coe, George Howard Alford, U. P. Hedrick, Luke Joseph Doogue, D. A. Compton, Edward Money, Alphonse de Candolle, Matthew Crawford, Henry H. Saylor, Cyril G. Hopkins, Gustavus A. Eisen, Bernice Brilmayer, Frederick Boyle, B. W. Jones, Edward Payson Roe, F. F. Rockwell, William Keane, M. C. BurrittLength314h 54m
About this audiobook
The Blossoming Bookshelf gathers forty-three classic texts into a capacious history of gardening, botany, horticulture, and the cultural imagination of plants. Its range extends from practical manuals on cultivation, soils, orchards, and landscape design to reflective nature writing, botanical inquiry, travel-inflected observation, and accounts of public and domestic gardens. The volume's significance lies in this productive interchange between utility and aesthetics: advice on raising plants stands beside meditations on their beauty, ecological relations, and social meanings. Its contributors—garden designers, naturalists, agricultural specialists, landscape writers, scientists, and observers from Britain, North America, Australia, and beyond—represent the broad nineteenth- and early twentieth-century culture of improvement. Collectively, these voices illuminate the period's expanding interest in scientific classification, experimental agriculture, civic beautification, rural reform, and the garden as a site of personal cultivation. Their differing professional and national perspectives prevent "the garden" from becoming a single ideal, revealing instead a field shaped by climate, labor, commerce, education, and taste. This anthology is especially valuable for readers seeking both instruction and intellectual context. It offers an unusual opportunity to compare prose styles, gardening philosophies, and botanical assumptions across a single volume. Students of environmental history, literature, landscape studies, and horticulture will find a rich archive here, while general readers can follow the illuminating dialogue among works that teach how plants are grown, described, valued, and imagined.
Audiobook details
GenreScience and Nature, Literary Classics
Length314 hrs 54 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMar 4, 2025
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Pears of New York
2PREFACE
3INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS
4CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE PEAR (pt. 1)
5CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE PEAR (pt. 2)
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6CHAPTER II SPECIES OF PEARS AND THEIR CHARACTERS
7CHAPTER III PEAR CULTURE
8CHAPTER IV LEADING VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 1)
9CHAPTER IV LEADING VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 2)
10CHAPTER IV LEADING VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 3)
11CHAPTER V MINOR VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 1)
12CHAPTER V MINOR VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 2)
13CHAPTER V MINOR VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 3)
14CHAPTER V MINOR VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 4)
15CHAPTER V MINOR VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 5)
16CHAPTER V MINOR VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 6)
17CHAPTER V MINOR VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 7)
18CHAPTER V MINOR VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 8)
19CHAPTER V MINOR VARIETIES OF PEARS (pt. 9)
20BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES, WITH ABBREVIATIONS USED
21Footnote
22The Peaches of New York
23PREFACE
24CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE PEACH (pt. 1)
25CHAPTER I HISTORY OF THE PEACH (pt. 2)
26CHAPTER II BOTANICAL AND HORTICULTURAL CLASSIFICATIONS OF THE PEACH
27CHAPTER III COMMERCIAL PEACH-GROWING IN AMERICA
28CHAPTER IV PEACH-GROWING IN NEW YORK
29CHAPTER V LEADING VARIETIES OF PEACHES (pt. 1)
30CHAPTER V LEADING VARIETIES OF PEACHES (pt. 2)
31CHAPTER V LEADING VARIETIES OF PEACHES (pt. 3)
32CHAPTER VI THE MINOR VARIETIES OF PEACHES (pt. 1)
33CHAPTER VI THE MINOR VARIETIES OF PEACHES (pt. 2)
34CHAPTER VI THE MINOR VARIETIES OF PEACHES (pt. 3)
35CHAPTER VI THE MINOR VARIETIES OF PEACHES (pt. 4)
36CHAPTER VI THE MINOR VARIETIES OF PEACHES (pt. 5)
37CHAPTER VI THE MINOR VARIETIES OF PEACHES (pt. 6)
38BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES, WITH ABBREVIATIONS USED
39The Grapes of New York
40The Grapes of New York
41PREFACE
42CHAPTER II AMERICAN GRAPES
43CHAPTER III THE VITICULTURE OF NEW YORK
44CHAPTER IV SPECIES OF AMERICAN GRAPES.
4522. VITIS SIMPSONI Munson.
46CHAPTER V THE LEADING VARIETIES OF AMERICAN GRAPES (pt. 1)
47CHAPTER V THE LEADING VARIETIES OF AMERICAN GRAPES (pt. 2)
48CHAPTER V THE LEADING VARIETIES OF AMERICAN GRAPES (pt. 3)
49CHAPTER V THE LEADING VARIETIES OF AMERICAN GRAPES (pt. 4)
50CHAPTER V THE LEADING VARIETIES OF AMERICAN GRAPES (pt. 5)