John Parkinson

author

John Parkinson

1567–1650

A key figure in early English botany, this apothecary helped turn the study of plants from practical herbal lore into something more systematic and wide-ranging. His books opened up the pleasures of gardens, flowers, and medicinal plants for generations of readers.

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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, he became one of the best-known English herbalists of the early modern period. Sources describe him as apothecary to James I, a founding member of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in 1617, and later Royal Botanist to Charles I.

He is remembered above all for two major books: Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (1629), a richly detailed work on gardening, orchards, and plants, and Theatrum Botanicum (1640), an enormous herbal that helped secure his reputation as one of the first great English botanists. His writing stands at an interesting moment in history, bridging the older world of medicinal herbals and the newer, broader study of plants for science and pleasure.

He died in 1650. Even now, Parkinson is often described as the last of the great English herbalists and one of the first major English botanists, which neatly captures why his work still matters.