This book recreates the world of forgotten gardens and their valiant, if often eccentric, owners. The reader is brought right up to date with the explosion of gardening among English people now living in southern Europe and such contemporary gardens such as the Caetani-Howard paradise at Ninfa and Sir Peter Smithers' plantman's jungle above Lake Lugano. The author is active in the NCCPG and he is a council member of the Royal National Rose Society. He is also a Fellow of the Linnaean Society.