Campbell-Culver, Maggie

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Campbell-Culver, Maggie

PERSONAL:

Married; husband's name Michael.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Barbican, London, England.

CAREER:

Writer, gardener, lecturer, and dancer. Ballet Rambert, dancer; lecturer on garden history. Also frequent contributor to British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio 4.

MEMBER:

National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens, Garden Trust Movement (founding member), Cornwall Gardens Trust; Linnean Society (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Garden Writers Guild award shortlist, for The Origin of Plants.

WRITINGS:

The Origin of Plants: The People and Plants That Have Shaped Britain's Garden History since the Year 1000, Headline (London, England), 2001.

A Passion for Trees: The Legacy of John Evelyn, Eden Project Books (London, England), 2006.

Editor of an edition of The Oxford Companion to Gardens; contributor to periodicals, including Historic Garden Review, Saturday Telegraph, NCCPG Journal for the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens, and Eden Friends magazine.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gardener Maggie Campbell-Culver's book The Origin of Plants: The People and Plants That Have Shaped Britain's Garden History since the Year 1000, is a history of plant life in Great Britain, a land that thousands of years ago sported few varieties of foliage, but is now home to more species than almost any other country on the planet. Early settlers to the area imported plants from their native lands, and later on, explorers such as Christopher Columbus introduced varieties of plants from exotic places. Everything from rhododendrons to gladiolus, now considered commonplace, were introduced from lands as far away as China and Brazil.

By 1500, Campbell-Culver states, transcontinental plant-trading became commonplace, as the Dutch, French, and Spanish traded nonindigenous species on the open market. The book features detailed illustrations of many plant varieties and traces how many non-native garden plants came to be transplanted in a country the last ice age had left nearly barren. Campbell-Culver also relates the disagreement that exists between experts on the dates of arrival for many species. The history of horticulture is wrapped up in history, and lax record-keeping practices prior to the eighteenth century make it difficult to pinpoint the definitive arrival of plants. Mostly it is a matter of folklore, although she explains that in the future better ways of determining these dates will become available.

The Origin of Plants "is a handsomely produced, well illustrated book," according to Henry Hobhouse in the Spectator, who noted that it is also a book "about plant-hunters," especially explorers and European settlers. "The grand Darwinian title is somewhat misleading," stated Times Literary Supplement contributor Alexander Urquhart, "for The Origin of Plants is not about evolution but immigration." Urquhart also noted that the book "is nevertheless an impressive work in both scope and detail. The story is a fascinating one."

Campbell-Culver, a former ballet dancer, has studied garden history for many years. As a gardener, she worked on the excavation of Fisbourne Roman Palace in Sussex, England, in the early 1970s, and managed the historic garden at Mount Edgcumbe in Cornwall, England.

In her next book, A Passion for Trees: The Legacy of John Evelyn, the author delves into the legacy in conservation left by the seventeenth-century English gardener, writer, and diarist who was an early advocate of the garden city. Most historians consider Evelyn's most important work to be Sylva: A Discourse of Forest Trees, a treatise that encouraged the gentry and other landowners to plant trees to supply lumber for the growing English Navy. As a result, Evelyn is credited with initiating the first national effort to plant trees throughout Great Britain. Focusing largely on Sylva, Campbell-Culver details the characteristics, history, and uses of trees using the advice that Evelyn first gave nearly four centuries earlier. In the process, Campbell-Culver shows how this father of the conservation movement in England provided advice that is still relevant to modern times. The author also discusses past theories of the relationship between vegetation and climate, and provides an overview of Eveyln's life. The book includes extensive color illustrations.

Writing on the Historic Gardens Foundation Web site, Richard B. Mawrey noted: "A Passion for Trees is Campbell-Culver at her best. Alder arcana, quirky facts about the quercus, plain truths on the plane—the book will prompt the reader to say ‘well, I never knew that’ or ‘how on earth did she find this out?’" A contributor to the Royal Society Web site noted that the author "never loses sight of his [Eveyln's] sheer joy in the beauty and aesthetic value of trees in a landscape."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 2002, Alice Joyce, review of The Origin of Plants: The People and Plants That Have Shaped Britain's Garden History since the Year 1000, p. 187.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, February, 2007, S. Hammer, review of A Passion for Trees: The Legacy of John Evelyn, p. 1010.

Financial Times, October 6, 2001, Ann Geneva, "Slow Invasion of Ground Forces," review of The Origin of Plants, p. 5.

Guardian (Manchester, England), June 17, 2006, Andrea Wulf, review of A Passion for Trees.

New York Times Book Review, December 8, 2002, review of The Origin of Plants, p. 26.

Spectator, September 15, 2001, Henry Hobhouse, review of The Origin of Plants, p. 37.

Times Literary Supplement, February 15, 2002, Alexander Urquhart, "Breaking New Ground," p. 36; January 12, 2007, Wesley Kerr, "Hedge Funds," review of A Passion for Trees, p. 7.