This is the UK’s, and probably the world’s, finest collection of horticultural literature from the 16th century to the present day.
RHS Lindley Library, London, is both an RHS members’ lending library and a world class research library. As well as a good collection of general gardening books, it also has an excellent collection of books on fruit, flower arranging, botanical art, garden design and garden history.
- Rare books
- Journals
- Historical periodicals
- Nursery catalogues
- Horticultural Pamphlets from the 19th Century
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Historical periodicals
There are more than 1,000 titles – the earliest dating from the late 18th century. Complete holdings information is being added to the online catalogue.
Important highlights are:
- Weekly gardening newspapers, such as Gardeners’ Chronicle, Journal of Horticulture, Garden and Gardeners’ Magazine are held in both London and Wisley.
- Periodicals illustrating plants, such as Botanical Magazine, Botanical Register, Botanical Cabinet, Florre de.Serre are all held at both London and Wisley.
- Index Londinensis cites plant illustrations in these titles frequently.
- These periodicals constitute a most important primary source for the history of 19th- and 20th-century garden design and practice.
Horticultural pamphlets
Among this hard-to-find collection from the 19th century is a series entitled Botanical Tracts, which is the most important. John Lindley had his collection of offprints and ephemera bound. The contents range from fairly common Linnean Society offprints to the only copies in this country of seedlists from St Petersburg Botanic Garden.
Subjects from greenhouse design (Samuel Hereman, Paxton’s collaborator) to coffee adulteration (Lindley and Hooker) to techniques of nature-printing (Ettingshausen) to monographs on individual genera or the flora of particular countries, are bound in order of acquisition.
A subsequent series, Botanical Pamphlets, continues the same themes from the 1860s to the 1890s. A series of RHS Pamphlets contains information of great interest to the history of the RHS, particularly in the 1860s-1870s.