PAGES : The Last Word in Gardening

The most ambitious gardening encyclopedia in Great Britain, with roots back to 1629, has been published in four volumes by Macmillan in London and Stockton Press in New York. Although written for British gardeners, it will be considered a leading authority throughout the world.

“The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening” costs $795 and includes 3,200 pages and 4,000 line drawings. Its editor is Anthony Huxley, well-known English garden writer and historian, assisted by a large committee and hundreds of garden experts.

The work derives from Parkinson’s “Paradisus” of 1629 and from other encyclopedias of 1768, 1801 and 1847. The immediate ancestor of the RHS dictionaries was the “Illustrated Dictionary” of George Nicholson, curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which was issued between 1884 and 1888, with a supplemental volume in 1901.

The Royal Horticultural Society authorized its own “Dictionary of Gardening” in 1936; but with World War II and other interruptions, it finally was issued by the Clarendon Press in 1951.

The present “New Dictionary” has been in preparation since 1987. Although its basis is the 1951 dictionary, more than 900 new pages have been added. Plant names have been updated and, for the first time, brief biographies are included.

Also new are extensive appendices of interest to home gardeners, such as large lists of common names with their botanical equivalents and a glossary of plant parts.