Cottesbrooke: An English kitchen garden

Abstract

Another addition to the flourishing market in gardening books (complete with de rigeur linen cover), this will interest garden historians only in passing. Susan Campbell tells us that she was gathering materials for ‘a history of kitchen gardening in Great Britain’ when she came across a fully-functioning kitchen garden at Cottesbrooke in the East Midlands; by this survival-surely by no means as unusual as she suggests-she seems to have been sidetracked into writing this month-by-month account of one particular garden, to which are added some very cursory notes on its history. Spidery line drawings and some colour photographs fulfill the expectations of the contemporary market, and for those who want a fairly detailed, practical. diary of one year in a large kitchen garden, with the added human interest of its personnel, this makes a pleasant volume. The perspectives it offers upon current social history are fascinating but seemingly oflittle interest to the author; one hopes that she soon gets back to that (much needed) history ofkitchen gardening, for which she has already some useful raw materials for a later chapter.