The politics of planting: Gardening in England from the Restoration through the Glorious Revolution

In the half-century following the Restoration of Charles II (1660), England became a nation of gardeners. By exploring the phenomenal growth of interest in gardens, I challenge the historiographical presumption that seventeenth-century England was an ancien regime, in which everyone supported absolutist politics and where advances in science were limited to a detached minority. Instead, a study of gardening reveals deep-seated ideological divisions within society as well as popular involvement with science.; The first portion of this dissertation examines the French formal garden, which is so often used to characterize the seventeenth century. The controlled and hierarchical pattern of the formal garden expressed absolutist political values. Indeed, this style was widely imitated by Charles II and his aristocratic supporters. These gardens upheld the values of the landed hierarchy and reflected the economic philosophy that equated land with wealth.; Yet many others in England planted a very different sort of garden, one that focused upon useful production and the advancement of science and agriculture. The second portion of this study examines the gardens of these individuals, many of whom also initiated the commercialization of gardening, promoted the science of botany, and; aimed to diversify and improve production by incorporating plants from the New World. Scientific, production-focused gardens promoted the authority of experience and experimentation, fostering the notion that all English people could promote the national interest. The efforts of these gardeners furthered both the financial and the agricultural revolution of the seventeenth century, and revealed a new economic philosophy that held that wealth could be created through the development of new markets and the advance of scientific knowledge.; Because the garden possessed political signification and was involved with the emerging market economy and with scientific development, it became a unique outlet to express changing ideas about authority, the economy, and the social structure. As gardeners of all social levels carved out their landscape from the Restoration to the Glorious Revolution they etched their own interpretation of the historic events surrounding them, and endorsed and furthered variant ideological and political positions.