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Garden history is more than the study of individuals such as "Capability Brown," who created estates for a wealthy élite. A new approach, which includes insights from geology and archaeology, the perspectives of social class and gender, the history of art and architecture, science, technology and literature, is changing our perspective so that we can see gardens and gardening within wider social, economic, political and cultural contexts. An examination of Victorian public parks reveals how their aesthetics were shaped by architecture made from the products of manufacturing industry while a study of three modest suburban estates considers how local industrialists shaped the environment of south Birmingham. The relationships between health, medicine and green spaces are explored through an analysis of the role of "therapeutic landscapes" in late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Worcestershire. Enhanced with maps, plans and black-and-white and colour illustrations, this is a volume of important scholarship that places the West Midlands at the heart of landscape history.
