"The heart of the book contains strong, precise description and thoughtful analysis. Martyn guides us with ease around the great gardens, explaining the ideas behind them, their planning and geometry, hydraulics and planting, alluding in passing to the works of Spenser and Sidney as well as Hill's 'Gardener's Labyrinth' and Gerard's 'Herbal.' She has also done some illuminating archival research, unearthing Cecil's planting lists from the manuscripts at Hatfield and finding previously unknown features of Theobalds . . . this spadework, and the author's visits to many Elizabethan houses and to the Renaissance gardens of Italy, enriches her elegantly produced book." —Sunday Telegraph
"The story of how Elizabeth I's two courtiers Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and Sir William Cecil (later, Lord Burghley) ruthlessly and grandly competed for her affections with their gardens . . . is thrillingly told . . . a fascinating account of the rivalry between these two ambitious men." —Lady
"Martyn's book is useful in highlighting the importance of the garden in the Elizabethan imagination. It's also timely, with plans afoot to trace the remains of the long-destroyed Theobalds, and a project to recreate Leicester's garden at Kenilworth now well under way. . . . Fantastical details of the gardens themselves—rosemary leaves covered in gold leaf catch the light, visitors rowed through a shady labyrinth of canals—intrigue every inch of the way." —BBC History Magazine
"A delightful, absorbing read, a cornucopia of amazing new facts about the Virgin Queen." —Sunday Times
"Gardening-as-politicking is a seductive and original idea. . . . Trea Martyn's descriptions of gardens . . . are excellent . . . . In evocative and lively prose she leads the reader along." —Guardian
"Bewitching and original. . . . Today. . . not a single authentic Elizabethan garden survives—all the more reason to welcome a book that uses a wealth of evocative detail to recreate this lost world of bright bowers and labyrinths. . . . Martyn's scrupulous research restores life to . . . a landscape so enchanting. . . . [An] exquisite book." —New York Times Book Review (February 12, 2012)
In the competitive atmosphere of the court of Queen Elizabeth I, political rivals stopped at nothing to curry favor with the queen. Those who hosted the queen at their own palaces—especially her favorites, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and William Cecil, Baron of Burghley—oversaw extravagant gardening and landscaping projects and planned elaborate outdoor entertainments to impress her. Martyn, a UK scholar of landscape and garden history, is well suited to catalog the Elizabethan projects and entertainments and to chart the transformations that took place in English gardens during the Elizabethan era. She uses gardens as a lens through which to view history, offering an enlightening perspective on Elizabeth's reign. While it is presumed readers know something about Elizabeth and her court, the reader with no prior knowledge of the queen or her reign will quickly become acclimatized to the subject. Those looking for a more straightforward history of gardening during this period will be disappointed, as the book contains a great deal of biographical information. VERDICT A charming mix of gardening history and biography, related with evocative prose, this will delight those interested in gardening history, Queen Elizabeth's life, or Elizabethan history. (With black-and-white Elizabethan illustrations, but no photographs of gardens.)—Sharon E. Reidt, Marlboro Coll. Lib., VT
