Paradisi in sole Paradisus Terrestris. Or A Garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed up: with A Kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes, & fruites, for meate or sause used with us, and An Orchard of all sorte of fruit-bearing Trees and shrubbes fit for our Land together with the right orderinge planting & preserving of them and their uses & vertues..

London: H. Lownes and R. Young, 1629. FIRST EDITION, first issue (A1r line 4 of heading ends "amend"). Hardcover. Fine. A very fine copy in late 19th c. paneled calf (rebacked, retaining the spine), gold ruled and stipple tooled in compartments with decorative floral tools at the angles, gilt. Spine richly gilt. Excellent internally with insignificant cosmetic blemishes: p. 1 lightly soiled, small hole in leaf B1 affecting a few letters, bifolium P2/5 with minor ink stains in the upper margin (caused by the inky fingers of a pressman), light marginal stain on leaf P1 recto, one index leaf with clean marginal tear (mended), a few trivial marginal smudges. (truncated) Richly illustrated with a fine pictorial woodcut title page, a woodcut portrait of Parkinson, and 110 full-page (and 3 smaller) woodcuts of plants. First edition of the most famous English gardening book of the seventeenth century. The title is a pun on the author’s name, which becomes clear if one understands that “paradisus” also means “park”. Thus, “Paradisi in sole Paradisus Terrestris” becomes “Park-in-Sun’s Earthly Park”.

The first part of the book deals with the pleasure or flower garden. The second part is on the kitchen garden and is illustrated with 15 full-page woodcuts, and contains 63 chapters, each devoted to an individual vegetable. The third part is on the fruit garden and is illustrated with 12 full-page woodcuts of fruit. It has 22 chapters and an addenda of a further 22 entries on varieties of fruit.

The woodcut title, depicting Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, filled with wonderful flowers and trees, is by Christopher Switzer, signed A. Switzer in the lower right-hand corner above a depiction of a woodcutter’s knife; the other woodcuts are almost certainly by him, and are for the most part original figures, although a few have been copied from Crispin de Passe.

John Parkinson (1567-1650) was a London pharmacist and one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Apothecaries. He served as Royal Apothecary to James I and was later appointed chief botanist (“Botanicus Regius Primarius") by Charles I. Parkinson served on the governing bodies of the Society of Apothecaries and the Court of Assistants before retiring, in 1622, to his private garden in Long Acre “well stored with rarities”.

“Parkinson’s significance as a gardener is indicated by his close friendships with many other major gardeners of his day, many of whom he refers to in this work, including William Coys of Essex, John Tredescant the Elder, and John Gerard… Parkinson’s garden was of considerable size. A total of 484 types of plants are recorded as having grown there… If the size of his garden alone is considered, Parkinson was one of the most important gardeners of the early 17th century in England.”(John Riddell)

“Parkinson was not just interested in growing plants but actively sought new varieties through his contacts abroad and by financing William Boel's plant hunting expedition to Iberia and North Africa in 1607-1608. He was responsible for the introduction of seven new plants into England and was the first gardener in England to grow the great double yellow Spanish daffodil. He was not only interested in exotic species but paid close attention to native flora and was the first to describe 33 native plants, thirteen of which grew near his home in Middlesex. Surprisingly, some of the plants he was first to describe were very common such as the Welsh Poppy, the Strawberry Tree, and the Lady's Slipper, but had gone unnoticed, or at least unrecorded by his predecessors.” (Hugh Cahill). (Inventory #: 5100)