Shakespeare’s Gardens
Posted in From the Library on August 4 2016, by Esther Jackson
Esther Jackson is the Public Services Librarian at NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library where she manages Reference and Circulation services and oversees the Plant Information Office. She spends much of her time assisting researchers, providing instruction related to library resources, and collaborating with NYBG staff on various projects related to Garden initiatives and events.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare in 1616. Throughout the world, scholars and institutions have been celebrating the bard’s life and work—including the World Shakespeare Congress held in Stratford-Upon-Avon and London last week and this week. On an appropriately literary note, one of the books about Shakespeare that has been published in 2016 comes from Jackie Bennett and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. That book is Shakespeare’s Gardens.
Shakespeare and his usage of plants in his works is a popular topic in botanical and garden history. In fact, the NYBG Mertz Library has over thirty books related to the playwright. The earliest, The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare by Henry N. Ellacombe, was published in 1884. With such a rich legacy of books on this topic, the question becomes what another publication could add to the corpus.
