Locus Amoenus: Gardens and Horticulture in the Renaissance

Agrarian innovation and new empirical approaches to plants and their cultivation transformed the landscape and natural world in early modern Europe. These changes not only laid the foundations for the industrial revolution, but reflected changing political and scientific ideas, social relations and religious thought. New leisure pursuits, the first public parks and ideas surrounding philosophical retreat developed together as the ownership of green spaces and their uses shifted between function and recreation.

Within Locus Amoenus, Alexander Samson provides a pioneering collection of new perspectives on garden history and the impact of its development, focusing on the Renaissance era. Contributions from a wide range of experts in the field guide readers through the world of the Renaissance herbal, medievalism in the English ‘Renaissance’ garden, the personification of nature in sixteenth-century Italy, Gascoigne’s Gardnings, Mary Somerset’s plants and Spanish Renaissance gardens.

These insightful contributions to Renaissance gardens and horticulture demonstrate the extent of our knowledge on how the natural world looked and how humans related to their environment. Ultimately, they reveal that gardens were a reflection of our changing relationship with nature and as such, a reflection of our development.