Hickman examines how Enlightenment – late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century – medical men participated in knowledge and material exchange through their gardens, bringing together the studies of environmental, scientific and medical history. Many of these men lived outside London, but practised in the city, allowing the gardens to benefit from the access ascribed to urban centres and the space of the countryside. By focusing on ‘regular’ medical practitioners she also hopes to highlight the garden as a liminal space between the wild countryside and the structured laboratory. Hickman eloquently meets her aims, raising further questions about the relationship between the environment and late eighteenth-century medical men.

The chapters take gardens from different perspectives, illustrating the extent to which they were communal spaces and how they could influence the populace. The first chapter begins at the Edinburgh botanic gardens, a site of teaching and learning for medical students and the layman. This garden and its keepers participated in knowledge exchange through discussions of exotic materials and knowledge creation through drawing and collecting botanical material. The second chapter examines the circulation of plant material around Britain, including a discussion of the connection between the term ‘exotic’ and colonialism. Interestingly, Hickman finds examples of animals within gardens, which were circulated in a similar manner to botanical materials and for similar objectives: further study and visual interest. The next few chapters discuss the growth of garden visiting by non-medical people. Hickman raises a couple of issues facing the enlightened medical men in these chapters, including how to transfer knowledge to a non-medical audience and the difficulty of attracting the ‘correct’ audience, making a distinction between the genteel and the lower-class. In Chapter 5, Hickman highlights the changes taking place to gardens in the early nineteenth century. She also interestingly emphasizes the duality of dulci and utile in contemporary discussions of botany and agriculture, in essence arguing that gardens merged the two concepts that eventually became separated. As the hospital and laboratory became more central, she argues that gardens lost their scientific utility. Finally, Hickman uses the epilogue to appeal to the heritage sector, asking for more communication with academia when interpreting gardens.

The senses act as a recurring theme throughout the text, in the vein of W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter's edited volume Medicine and the Five Senses (1993). In using the senses, Hickman accesses the experience of using and visiting the garden, going beyond the study of landscape design, which has been a cornerstone of previous historiography. This avenue of study is particularly potent because of the difficulty posed by non-extant materials – many of Hickman's chosen case studies no longer exist in the same way as their Enlightenment iterations. She is still able to surmise how these gardens affected the senses through written records coupled with personal experience. Using the senses continues to be an effective method for understanding past experiences.

As a historian of Scotland, one of the many benefits of this book for me is the inclusion of Britain outside England and London. Hickman incorporates the botanic gardens in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin, as well as exploring Edward Jenner's botanic garden in Gloucestershire. Unfortunately, there is no extensive discussion of Welsh gardens, which indicates perhaps the amount of work still to be done in this context. But by incorporating much of Britain, Hickman brings to light the dialogue between British botanical collectors, illustrating the wide geography covered by these networks – and, indeed, does not shy away from their involvement in colonialism, a particularly pertinent topic in current and future historiography.

In addition, the connection between the historical and the current was particularly compelling. The epilogue is a shining example of how historical research can inform heritage and, importantly, of how this should be a two-way discourse. In a sense, Hickman connects the historical visitor of private gardens to the modern-day National Trust (of Scotland) member, and understanding the experience of one benefits an understanding of the other. Hopefully, this will lead to more collaboration between historians – maybe even Hickman herself – and heritage gardens.

There was room in the book for comparisons to the gardens of other professional men, the aristocracy, or even women. Hickman touches on the topic by discussing the reaction of visitors to gardens, but through such comparisons there could be answers to how medical men exchanged or collected botanic material and information differently or uniquely. Similarly, more specific examples of the botanic material within the gardens might illustrate the differing priorities among professions and even among medical men. She does admit that inventories are ‘slippery’, but some acknowledgement of the specific botanical elements would have been welcome.

Despite the difficulties of changing landscapes and locations of collections, Hickman proves that scholars can study historical gardens in a meaningful way. Furthermore, the questions raised by this book will only benefit the study of the history of British medicine. Without meaning to leave this review on a dire note, the present and historical relationship between the land and humanity will only become more important as humans struggle into the future.