John Parkinson

author

John Parkinson

1567–1650

A pioneering English botanist and herbalist, this 17th-century gardener helped shape how plants were described and studied in Britain. His richly detailed books blended practical gardening advice with careful observation, making them influential for generations.

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Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp a kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes & fruites for meate or sauce vsed with vs, and, an orchard of all sorte of fruitbearing trees and shrubbes fit for our land, together with the right orderinge, planting & preseruing of them and their vses & vertues

Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp a kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes & fruites for meate or sauce vsed with vs, and, an orchard of all sorte of fruitbearing trees and shrubbes fit for our land, together with the right orderinge, planting & preseruing of them and their vses & vertues

by John Parkinson

About the author

Born in 1567, John Parkinson became one of the best-known English herbalists and botanists of his time. He worked as an apothecary in London, was associated with the founding of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in 1617, and later served as botanist to King Charles I.

He is remembered above all for two major books: Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1629), a celebrated gardening work, and Theatrum Botanicum (1640), one of the most substantial English herbals of the period. These books helped bridge the older tradition of herbals and the more systematic study of plants that was beginning to emerge.

Parkinson died in 1650, but his reputation lasted well beyond his lifetime. He is often described as one of the last great English herbalists and one of the first great English botanists, a fitting summary of a writer whose work stood at a turning point in the history of botany.