Hertfordshire Garden History contains an absorbing collection of essays spanning a wide range of periods and varied subjects including: the 17th-century garden of the Earls of Salisbury at Quickswood; a reappraisal of the work of Charles Bridgeman at Tring Park; the influence of the East India Company on Hertfordshire's gardens; the landscapes designed by Richard Woods at Brocket Park and Newsells Bury; a 'lost' 18th-century garden at Roxford; the influences behind the creation of John Scott's grotto at Ware; the famous Victorian orchid nursery of Frederick Sander; the creation of Clarence Park, St. Albans; the work of the Pulham family in the 19th and early 20th centuries; and, the effects of wartime shortages on the creation of the gardens at Queenswood.
Anne Rowe is a landscape historian. She is Research Co-ordinator for the Hertfordshire Gardens Trust and lectures in landscape and garden history for Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge and for the Workers' Educational Association. She is the author of 'The distribution of parks in Hertfordshire: Landscape, Lordship and Woodland' in The Medieval Park: New Perspectives (ed. Robert Liddiard, 2007) and a contributor to An Historical Atlas of Hertfordshire (ed. David Short), forthcoming from UH Press.