A reprint of a classical work in the Cambridge Library Collection.
Best remembered today for his technically innovative design for the Crystal Palace of 1851, Joseph Paxton (1803-65) was head gardener to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth by the age of twenty-three, and remained involved in gardening throughout his life. Tapping in to the burgeoning interest in gardening amongst the Victorians, in 1841 he founded the periodical "The Gardener's Chronicle" with the botanist John Lindley (1799-1865), with whom he had worked on a Government report on Kew Gardens. "Paxton's Flower Garden" appeared between 1850 and 1853, following a series of plant-collecting expeditions. Only three of the planned ten volumes were published, but with hand-coloured plates (which can be viewed online alongside this reissue) and over 500 woodcuts, the work is lavish.
Volume 1 includes b/w plates of orchids, Lindley's speciality, along with a pitcher plant and Moutan peony, both still unusual and exotic at the time of publication.
Preface
1. Drummond's Side-Saddle Flower
2. The Glittering Gland-Bearing Trumpet-Flower
3. Walker's Cattleya
4. The Toothed Ceanothe
5. The Changeable Adamia
6. The Purple-Lipped Oncid
7. The Ceylon Rhododendron
8. The Tetrandrous Boronia
9. The Long-Tailed Lady's-Slipper
10. Dampier's Clianth
11. The Sweet Trichopil
12. The Magnificent Medinill
13. Double Chinese Peach Trees
14. The Two-Petalled Begonia
15. The Cervantes Odontoglot
16. The White Cunningham Rhododendron
17. The Close-Headed Bejaria
18. The Speckled Odontoglot
19. The Upright Bryanth
20. The Salmon-Coloured Moutan
21. The Sessile Oncid
22. The Kamtchatka Rhodotham
23. The Oval and the Pallid Hoyas
24. Varieties of the Ruby-Lipped Cattleya
25. The Acuminate Onion
26. The Gauntletted Tacsonia
27. The Transparent Dendrobe
28. The Gillies Poinciana
29. The Crimped Gueldres Rose
30. The Long-Petaled Epidendrum
31. The Deep Blood-Coloured Moutan
32. The Asoca
33. The Variegated Oncid
34. The Anglebearing Leaf-Cactus
35. The Occidental Banksia
36. The Blue Vanda
Index