William Lawson (fl. 1618) :
The Country Hous-Wifes Garden and
A New Orchard and Garden

Little is known of the north England horticulturalist William Lawson but the popularity of his works The Country Hous-Wifes Garden (1617) - the first such book written for novice women gardeners - and A New Orchard and Garden, first published in 1618 and reprinted eight times over the next 70 years, has made his name well-known among garden historians.

The Country Hous-Wifes Garden lists in detail the herbs, flowers and vegetables that should be planted and how they should beChristine Macgregor's bookplate grown, and gives several designs for knots. A New Orchard and Garden is of particular interest for its representation of the design of country 'orchards' or pleasure gardens in the Tudor period, and for Lawson's infectious enthusiasm for his subject, which has caused him to be dubbed the "Izaak Walton" of gardening writers.

Below are links to several sections of the corrected 1660 edition with Gervase Markham's The inrichment of the weald of Kent and Farewell to husbandry.. These are presented as image only PDF files, and you will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer in order to view them. As it was necessary to scan the pages at a relatively high resolution, these files are quite large.

This copy was part of a rich collection donated to the Library by Christine Macgregor (a grand-daughter of Robert Barr Smith) in 1974 with her bookplate by Adrian Feint.
 

The Country Hous-Wifes Garden
File Section File Size
country1.pdf Title page (p. [68])-p. 79 728 kb
country2.pdf Page 80-92 803 kb

 
A New Orchard and Garden
File Section File Size
orchard1.pdf Title page-p. 3 582 kb
orchard2.pdf Page 4-13 694 kb
orchard3.pdf Page 14-23 681 kb
orchard4.pdf Page 24-33 740 kb
orchard5.pdf Page 34-43 708 kb
orchard6.pdf Page 44-56 872 kb