Tag Archives: hothouse

The Empress’s Greenhouse

Last week’s post about Josephine and the landscape at Malmaison left out any discussion of the plants grown there, so today’s post is going to make up for that, because  it was plants that really captured her imagination. That meant, of … Continue reading

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The Jardin des Plantes

I looked in the last post at the early history of Paris’s principal botanic garden, the former royal garden or the Jardin du Roi. Today’s is about what happened there between the French Revolution and today. It’s a good story … Continue reading

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Beaudesert: “a desert beautified”

Beaudesert is/was  an enormous estate in Staffordshire’, its name probably coming from the French for  the surrounding landscape – “beautiful wilderness”.  It has a reasonably well recorded architectural and contents history up to the demolition of the great Elizabethan mansion … Continue reading

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How Orchids became a Librarian’s Nightmare

It maybe a strange title but this is really the story of a rich young man and his passion for plants or rather one particular kind of plant.  James Bateman was the grandson and son of rich industrialists who had … Continue reading

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Ickworth

I was lecturing in  Suffolk recently and took the opportunity to call in at Ickworth, for the first time in many years. What a revelation that was. Not the grand rotunda of the house, splendid on the outside but  rather … Continue reading

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