John Tradescant, the protagonist in this novel, was a great gardener in the post-Elizabethan era. The wonderful work that he did was achieved by obtaining samples of rare plants, unknown at that time, from around the world. He did not name any of them after himself, but his surname was given to a family of flowering plants from the New World: Transescantia, known to many people as spiderwort, a very pretty trailing vine with star shaped flowers. Some of his gardening achievements were unique for his time, such as enclosing gardens in hollow brick walls that were heated so that sub-tropical plants would bear fruit. The records of his trip to Russia are still extant. Since so little is available about his life, I recommend this book if you are at all interested in the history of gardening in England.
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