Suzanne Patman wrote an article on public gardens and their development in 2015. She gives a brief overview of various restrictions and laws regarding public gardens. She mentions examples such as the private deer parks of the seventeenth century and the Enclosure Acts from 1750-1860. ¹ The UK Parliament website has a brief summary on the gradual enclosure on land across the centuries. They mention between 1604 and 1914, around 6.8 million acres within England alone were subject to these Enclosure Acts. They even mention the division among historians about the impact of land enclosure of the lives of poorer people. ²

Patman goes on to explain that by the nineteenth century, public parks became more popular, which in part addressed the lack of accessible land for the lower classes. She also mentions the development of the allotment, which allowed ordinary people to at least have some private access to land. She argues that the study of gardens is in a sense really the study of ownership. ³

The Development of ‘Guerrilla Gardening’

Patman addresses a rather unique phenomenon called ‘guerrilla gardening’. She explains that it appeared first in the 1970s in New York, from a woman named Liz Christy. This type of illegal gardening involved planting in disused plots and roadsides. Food production was a primary reason, but there were also other plants used such as sunflowers. The UK during the 1960s also had a development of urban green spaces, but through legal means. Through negotiation with local authorities, examples like Kentish Town City Farm and Meanwhile Gardens transformed derelict areas into public green spaces. ⁴

Patman does touch a little on the history of guerrilla gardening in the UK as well. She mentions that while there were not many prosecutions linked to the Criminal Damage Act 1971, under which guerrilla gardening fell, there were problems. She highlights criticisms such as endangering roadside workers and ruining officially planted areas due to soil or root damage, for example. ⁵

Botanic Gardens

Regarding displays of wealth and power through gardens, botanic gardens offer an interesting case study. Arthur W. Hill in 1915 (100 years prior to Patman) wrote on this subject. He mentions the various prototypes which lay the foundations for the botanic gardens. He stretches as far back as the Ancient Greeks in relation to the classification of plants, and gives credit to the Chinese as being ‘the real founders of the idea of botanic gardens’. ⁶

Hill goes into the use of botanic gardens for medicinal reasons. He gives the example of the original Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, founded by two physicians named Sir Robert Sibbald and Sir Andrew Balfour in the eighteenth century. This was in part to enable them to have knowledge of plants used in the drugs they gave to patients. Hill mentions that the Edinburgh Garden, at the time of publication, was still being used by the University in conjunction with the Medical department. ⁷

He also discusses the development of economic gardens by Great Britain in the eighteenth century. Hill notes the founding of a botanic garden in 1764 on St. Vincent Island by the British, which later gave rise to other notable establishments. He argues that the botanic gardens in Buitenzorg, Java, founded in 1817, were among the finest in the world. They were home to highly profitable products such as rubber and coffee. ⁸

Conclusion

It is fascinating to see how many ways in which gardens can affect human lives. I have demonstrated in this blog the wide use of gardens from political protest to medical education. You can use this unusual case study to consider the following points:

• Gardens always have a connection to power, whether it be through further enclosing on public land or in trying to reclaim it in protest
• The use of botanic gardens for medical purposes may have saved the lives of some of your family members – perhaps some of them were even the botanists or physicians that cultivated them
• Botanic gardens used for economic purposes also show that despite the beauty and exoticism surrounding these plants, the existence of the gardens was mostly likely dependent on their monetary value.

In a sense, the history of gardens is both quaint and worrisome, depending on the angle. If you were poor and trying to live off the land, having no public land to access would have made life harder. The economic and medical side of botanic gardens is both beneficial for those who gained from it, but even in a medical sense, the study of such plants may have more to do with the intellectual life of the physician rather than the care of the patient. All of these little facts can give food for thought.

Sources

Hill, Arthur W. ‘The History and Functions of Botanic Gardens’. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 2 (1915): 185-240.

Parliament UK. ‘Enclosing the Land’. Accessed 28th May 2025. https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/towncountry/landscape/overview/enclosingland/.

Patman, Suzanne. ‘A New Direction in Garden History’. Garden History 43 (2015): 273-283.