ENGLAND'S MAGNIFICENT GARDENS How a Billion-Dollar Industry Transformed a Nation, from Charles II to Today

This audiobook is unusual amid gardening literature as it focuses not on gardens or gardeners, but on the economics of gardening. Floud looks at the retail side of British gardening history, and his endless conversations of pounds and dollars then and now eat up a substantial portion of the narrative. But the rich voice of narrator Gildart Jackson brings a resonance and decisiveness that make for highly agreeable listening, especially while gardening. Nobody enhances a phrase like "stately home" the way Jackson does or conveys with such deliberation the step-by-step, century-by-century construction of a vast national treasure and revenue source. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2021]