A New Orchard and Garden with The Country Housewife’s Garden (1618)

This is a facsimile edition with an introduction by the agricultural and gardening historian, Malcolm Thick.

William Lawson (d. 1635) was a clergyman on Teesside in North Yorkshire at the beginning of the seventeenth century. He was a keen, experienced gardener who distilled the fruits of his knowledge into these two little books, among the treasures of early gardening literature. The Country Housewife’s Garden is precious for its attention to the role of women: as cooks, lovers of fine flowers, and keepers of the medicine cupboard.

Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Lawson wrote from experience: he got his fingers dirty not simply re-telling book-learnt knowledge. There is the ring of truth in his advice. While making lots of suggestions about the practice of gardening and growing fruit trees, he is particularly interested in the layout and design of orchard and pleasure garden. There are some fine woodcuts of knot-gardens and a garden layout. He is also full of information about beekeeping. And at the end of the two main works, there are two contemporary pamphlets on grafting and on picking, packing and transporting fruit.

To quote from an essay on Lawson produced by the Special Collections Dept. of the University of Glasgow

Although not published until 1618, Lawson's work is really the product of an Elizabethan life. But it is interesting to note that in its practicality, it is also an example of the age of reason; at this time there was a growing preoccupancy with the workings of nature and science, and a burgeoning interest in subjects such as botany, concentrating on the useful qualities and medical virtues of plants. Such a utilitarian outlook was also to be found in the tenets of Puritanism: good husbandry was keenly pursued, physical toil being regarded as a form of devotion to God. It should be remembered that Lawson was a Protestant preacher, and as Thick points out, his religious convictions were broadly puritan; as he states, he had no time for 'popery and knavery'.

This a facsimile edition with an introduction by the agricultural and gardening historian, Malcom Thick, taken from the printing of 1656.