Unearthed is on display at Glasgow’s Mitchell Library showcasing a gardening book published in the 1600s

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Unearthed: The Power of Gardening is a free display at The Mitchell Library (2 May – 10 August 2025) exploring the transformative, enriching and sometimes radical power of gardening.

Transcript

00:00So, my name's Clare. I'm one of the Librarians in Special Collections, which is one of the departments here in the Mitchell Library.

00:06And I have a very special and unique book to show you today.

00:10It's Herbo, which is a book of illustrations of plants.

00:15The first edition was published in 1597, but this edition, the second one, was published in 1633.

00:22It's full of woodcut illustrations of plants from around the world.

00:28And this particular copy of this book is completely unique.

00:33So, it has an embroidered cover.

00:37So, you can see here that it's a vase of flowers with fratellaries and forget-me-nots.

00:45And we know exactly who embroidered that cover because of some of the information inside the book.

00:51It belonged to a woman called Roberta Anderson, and Hart and her sisters lived in a big house in Ayrshire.

00:58They were very well off, but on the census of 1911, they were listed as pony breakers, iron turners, gardeners, etc.

01:10So, you can see that there were women who were really working in their place.

01:15One of the members of the family gave it to a man called James Whitten, who was the Director of Parks for Glasgow.

01:22It then ended up in the Parks Department and then the Mitchell Library in 1960.

01:27So, that's how it got here.

01:28This is the sort of title page and you can see a name here.

01:32Mary Wilson, her book.

01:35And on this page, we have mainly women's names in this book.

01:40So, it's like social history, all of these.

01:42We have Mary Harris, Mary Wilson and B.H. Anderson.

01:47So, that's Bertha, Robertha Anderson.

01:51And she is the lady who embroidered the cover.

01:54It was given to her by her friend, Miss Longfield, who got it from a bookseller.

02:00And when Bertha died, her sister gave it to James Whitten and wrote the date of Bertha's death there.

02:09October 31st, 1918.

02:11So, it was given to James as a sort of remembrance of Bertha.

02:16So, they obviously knew each other.

02:18To have this book, she was a gardener.

02:20It says that in the census.

02:21To have this book, it meant a lot to her.

02:24It would have been very expensive to buy at the time.

02:28And it's full of these kind of woodcuts of plants.

02:37So, this is like, all the additions of Gerard's Herbal look like this inside.

02:42So, it is actually in really good condition as well.

02:45They said that he plagiarised quite a lot of it.

02:50The woodcuts are recycled from another book that was published previously.

02:55That was published previously.

02:56That was published previously.

02:57That was published previously.

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