Eighteenth-century Britain experienced a flood of plant introductions from around the world, the result of exploration, colonisation and commercialisation. Whether grown for profit or pleasure, beauty or utility, plants were a commodity that increased in supply and helped to feed the ‘Gardening Revolution’ of the early modern period. The commercial nursery business expanded in the provinces, bringing a wider range of plants to a growing number of customers. The growth of print was essential to this circulation of new plants and the attendant dissemination of horticultural and botanical knowledge. Through nursery catalogues, newspaper advertisements, gardening manuals and books of botanical illustration, plants and print combined to satisfy the appetite for landscape improvement, horticultural knowledge and botanical curiosity. The nursery catalogue illustrates the global movement of nature, the ordering of the natural world and the agency of the nurseryman in the spread of plants and scientific knowledge through the medium of print. Using Birmingham as a case-study, this research considers the connections between garden history and printing history and culture. In so doing it illuminates new aspects of Birmingham’s society and culture in the eighteenth century that challenge our perception of a town more readily noted for its manufacturing than its marigolds
