The Fern Garden
How to Make, Keep, and Enjoy It

James Shirley Hibberd helped shape fashions in gardening for middle-class Victorians; this work on ferns was first published in 1869.

Shirley Hibberd (Author)

9781108037181, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 October 2011

182 pages, 39 b/w illus. 8 colour illus.
21.6 x 14 x 1.1 cm, 0.24 kg

James Shirley Hibberd (1825–90) was a journalist and writer on gardening, whose popular works had great influence on middle-class taste. Although not a trained horticulturalist, his many books were based on practical experience. He developed a succession of gardens in north London concentrating on particular types of plants, and his books reflected this work, with the Rose Book (1864) and the Fern Garden (1869) being particularly successful. He also wrote on garden design, flower arrangement, garden furniture and architecture, and his Rustic Adornments of 1856, also published in this series, is an important work of social and fashion history. He edited the magazine Floral World until 1875 and later the Gardener's Magazine, and was even consulted by the government about potato blight. His engaging and very personal style made him a popular forerunner of modern celebrity gardeners, and set a fashion for highly decorative and ornamental gardens.

Preface
1. Ferns in general
2. Fern collecting
3. How to form an outdoor fernery
4. Cultivation of rock ferns
5. Cultivation of marsh ferns
6. Ferns in pots
7. The fern house
8. The fernery at the fireside
9. Management of fern cases
10. The art of multiplying ferns
11. British ferns
12. Cultivation of greenhouse and stove ferns
13. Fifty select greenhouse ferns
14. Thirty select stove ferns
15. Gold and silver ferns
16. Tree ferns
17. Fern allies
Index.

Subject Areas: Botany & plant sciences [PST]