The English Cottage Garden is an illustrated celebration of that quintessentially English garden: the cottage garden and its intricate mix of beauty, utility, wildness, and domestication. From its medieval beginnings as a yard for livestock and vegetables, the cottage garden became a retreat for the gentry of seventeenth-century and took on a new dimension of sophistication as well as retaining its traditional functional roots. Jane Taylor takes us on a wonderful tour through medicinal herbs, topiary, woodland and meadow flowers, and some more exotic plants.