Catherine Horwood

There are plenty of books on how to look after houseplants but no one has shown us how and when and why these plants came to be found in our homes. In this fascinating book we learn how potted plants are as subject to fashion as pieces of furniture. For the Victorians it was the aspidistra in the front parlour; for us it is the orchid in the designer loft. We find that Wedgwood created a market for special bulb pots and that some of Conran's early designs were for houseplant containers. Then there is the story of mignonette - a modest plant but once prized in every home for its intoxicating scent. Now that scent is lost to us for ever. Catherine Horwood's novel combination of social history, plant history and the history of interior design is intriguing. Her illustrations come from a variety of unusual sources since potted plants can be found in many unexpected corners.

The Story of Plants in the Home

Potted History

The author presents her view of the questionable pieces of fashion from the last fifty years.

What We Shouldn't Have Worn... But Did

Worst Fashions

Could a book by any other name smell as sweet? Absolutely not. The rose is the world’s favorite flower—and always has been. It is our greatest floral symbol of love and romance, and it is a bloom that touches our hearts as the flower most often chosen to celebrate significant milestones—weddings, anniversaries, births, and indeed, deaths. In this book, Catherine Horwood traces the botanical, religious, literary, and artistic journeys of the rose across the centuries, from battles to bridal bouquets. From Cleopatra’s rose petal–filled bed to Nijinsky’s Spectre de la Rose, from the highly prized Attar of Rose oil so beloved by the ancient Persians to the rosy scents of top perfume labels today, from Shakespearean myths about the War of the Roses to the significance of roses in Queen Elizabeth I’s embroidered dresses, and even to blockade-running during the Napoleonic Wars to satisfy Empress Josephine’s passion for collecting her favorite flower, Rose blossoms with the many stories of our ardor for this botanical family. Featuring a bower of illustrations and drawing on an array of sources as rich and many-hued as roses themselves, Horwood’s tale opens our eyes and noses to the world’s major rose-growing nations. With operatic tales of medieval bestsellers, nurserymen’s rivalries, and changing tastes in our personal flower beds, Rose is certain to woo both gardeners and non-gardeners alike.

Rose

The British have always been concerned about accent, appearance and class, but at no time during the twentieth century was ‘keeping up appearances’ more important than during the 1920s and 1930s. From the impecunious youth anxious to create a favourable impression at the local tennis club dance to female office workers advised by the Daily Mail that women in business kept ‘their position partly, if not chiefly, by appearance’, we peer into the intimate lives and anxieties of the middle classes as they dressed to impress. Choices were influenced as much by the advent of mass production, economic stringency, snobbery and the influence of America, as by personal aesthetics. Seemingly insignificant items such as ties, braces, gloves and hats, could convey a lack of breeding if worn incorrectly. This engagingly written and illustrated book explores the social mores behind one of society’s most popular activities, and reveals not only how we dressed but why.

Fashion and Class Between the Wars

Keeping Up Appearances

In this fascinating book we learned how potted plants are as much subject to fashion as pieces of furniture. For the Victorians, it was the aspidistra in the front parlour, the Edwardians loved a palm, and, for today's millennials, no home is complete without the ubiquitous fiddle-leaf fig. This book show that there is little new when it comes to plants in the home. In the mid-18th century, Wedgwood created a market for special bulb pots and in the 1950s, some of Terence Conran's earliest designs were for houseplant containers. Across the ages, the choice of potted plants has been influenced by the layout of houses, the levels of dirt and pollution and the equipment to hand. Now, with so much choice, we seem happy to treat houseplants as disposables. This book gives a better understanding of the miracles that were once achieved with indoor plant displays, inspired by Sir Hugh Platt's 1608 vision of a garden 'within doores'. This new edition has been revised with new material added to bring the history of the houseplant and its massive explosion in popularity right up to date.

How Houseplants Took Over Our Homes

Beth Chatto was the inspiration behind the "right plant, right place" ethos that lies at the heart of modern gardening. She also wrote some of the best-loved gardening books of the 20th century, among them The Dry Garden, The Damp Garden, and Beth Chatto's Gravel Garden. Some years before her death in May 2018, aged 94, Beth authorized Catherine Horwood to write her biography, with exclusive access to her archive. It also includes extracts from Beth's notebooks and diaries, never previously published, bringing Beth's own distinctive and much-loved voice into the book. Most of the photographs from Beth's personal archives, have also never been seen in print before. For Beth's legions of fans, here is the personal story behind her beliefs and the struggles and determination that brought her success.

A Life with Plants

Beth Chatto

From Flora, Roman goddess of plants, to today's gardeners at Kew, women have always gardened. Women gardeners have grown vegetables for their kitchens and herbs for their medicine cupboards. They have been footnotes in the horticultural annals for specimens collected abroad. They taught young women about gardening twenty-five years before women's horticultural schools officially existed. And their influence on the style of our gardens, frequently unacknowledged, survives to the present day. From these triumphs to the battles fought against male-dominated institutions, from the horticultural pioneers to the bringers of change in society's attitudes, this book is a celebration of the best of the species -- gardening women.

Catherine Horwood

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