Need help with your summer gardening or planning a home-brew?
Recently catalogued TypBL.B96EH is a volume of 11 tracts on gardening and animal husbandry dated 1578-1599. Many of these tracts include some very beautiful and detailed woodcuts.
The 1594 edition of Thomas Hill’s The gardeners labyrinth has some particularly interesting layouts of garden mazes and images of agricultural life (pictured left). In this tract, you can also learn when certain plants were planted and harvested and what herbs were used for therapeutics.
Also of interest is Reginald Scot’s 1578 A perfite platforme of a hoppe garden, and necessarie instructions for the making and mayntenaunce thereof. This large tract on hop growing and harvesting goes into great detail about the growing and cultivating of hops in the 16th century, and has some fantastic engravings (including the image below).
TypBL.B96EH also includes four tracts on animal husbandry, two other tracts on gardening and two tracts on the care and cure of horses. If you are interested, make an appointment and come see it for yourself!
–DG