The Manchester Botanical and Horticultural Society was founded in 1827 to allow members the opportunity to study botany and horticulture and to create an ambience "not unlike a fashionable resort". Today the Garden is all but forgotten and only the former entrance gates and a street name remain. This book, illustrated with many contemporary engravings and postcards, charts the history of the Garden; its international reputation in horticultural developments and many floral triumphs; its recurrent financial crises and ultimate degeneration into a venue for cat and dog shows and final conversion to a doomed amusement park.
Ann Brooks studied Pharmacy at Manchester University followed by a varied career in hospital pharmacy. Her great love of gardening and the history of the gardening movement led her to return to academia and she completed a PhD in 2007 on The Manchester Botanic Garden and the Movement for Subscription Botanic Gardens. She is the co-author of a number of papers on the history of Manchester and is currently writing a book on the movement for subscription botanic gardens and conducting research on Victorian villa gardens.
1. Manchester, 1822
2. Gardening in Manchester 1790–1887
3. A Botanic Garden for Manchester
4. The Membership ‘Individuals of the highest respectability’
5. Creating the Garden
6. The Glasshouses ‘Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.’
7. Staffing the Garden
8. ‘It is not a church, not a palazzo, not a chateau’ 1839–1854
9. ‘Art Triumphed over Nature’ 1857
10. ‘… The Darkness Before the Dawn’ 1858–1865
11. ‘The Genius Behind the Machine’ 1865–1887
12. ‘Our Poverty and not our Will Consented’ 1889–1894
13. Struggling On 1895–1907
14. Conclusion
Appendix 1. Occupational Analysis of the membership
Appendix 2. The Herbarium of the Manchester Botanical and Horticultural Society
