La Mortola: In the Footsteps of Thomas Hanbury (In the Footsteps S.)

by Alasdair Moore (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $34.54

  Overlooking the sea on the Franco/Italian Riviera, La Mortola remains one of the most famous botanical gardens in the world. Behind these gardens lies the fascinating story of Sir Thomas Hanbury, an English cloth merchant in China for nearly twenty years before returning to Europe to settle with his wife and fortune. A Quaker philanthropist and great lover of plants, Thomas Hanbury not only donated Wisley - the pre-eminent show garden in Britain - to the Royal Horticultural Society, but established The Giardini Botanici Hanbury, known as La Mortola in 1867. Gardener and writer Alasdair Moore traces the footsteps of Thomas Hanbury, a man who is revered in the gardening world, but about whom relatively little is documented generally, in a lively and utterly absorbing book. With unique access to Hanbury family documents and an expert?s knowledge of the copious unusual and exotic plants that La Mortola encompasses, Moore brings to life not only an extraordinary individual but his remarkable garden and its place in the history of nearby Ventimiglia, where Hanbury built schools for local children and in which to this day streets remain named in his honour.