ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the intellectual context of The Education of Gardeners and the origins of John Loudons ideas. It argues that the explicit secularism and his educational agenda, which he believed would lead to a wider dissemination of wealth, endow the gardener with emblematic status. At the same time, the fusion of Calvinist and Enlightenment discourses suggests the development of an educated gardener whose life will be one of struggle and restraint. This struggle might, in turn, be a reflection of John Loudons own life. Because The Education of Gardeners, as originally published in 1822, serves in part as an early manifesto for the Gardeners Magazine. Statistics of Gardening, describes the social science of gardening, and John Loudon argues that the future of gardening depends on the improvement of taste amongst patrons of gardens and on the education of gardeners.
