John Parkinson

author

John Parkinson

1567–1650

A pioneering English herbalist and botanist, he helped bridge the world of traditional herbal medicine and the emerging science of plant study. His richly detailed books opened up gardens, orchards, and useful plants to 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, John Parkinson became one of the most important English writers on plants in the early seventeenth century. He worked as an apothecary in London, served James I, and was later appointed botanist to Charles I. He was also among the founding members of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries.

Parkinson is best remembered for two major books. Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris focused on gardening and described plants grown in orchards, kitchen gardens, and flower gardens, while Theatrum Botanicum was a much larger herbal that gathered a huge range of knowledge about plants and their uses. Together, these works helped mark the shift from older herbal traditions toward a more careful, wide-ranging study of botany.

Though many details of his early life remain uncertain, his influence is clear. He is often described as one of the last great English herbalists and one of the first great English botanists, a writer whose books captured both the practical and the curious side of studying the natural world.