Originally published between 1850 and 1895, Album Vilmorin: Les Plantes potageres (The Vegetable Garden) brought garden glory to the printed page. Featuring 46 magnificent color plates, the book was a marvel of agro-botanic iconography and a triumph for its publishers, the illustrious Vilmorin-Andrieux & Cie, the most important seed company of the 19th century. In this new edition, TASCHEN reprints The Vegetable Garden illustrations with utmost accuracy and care. A sure favorite for cooks, gardeners, and anyone rejoicing in the great outdoors, the edition brims with wholesome pleasure as much as expert botanical understanding. From gleaming eggplants to the plumpest strawberries, these vivid plates are testimony not only to the skill of the original artists, most of whom trained as artist-naturalists at the famous Jardin des Plantes, but also to the beauty of simple sensory pleasures-texture, freshness, and flavor.

Author Biography

Werner Dressendoerfer is a pharmaceutical historian, academic librarian, and former honorary Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His particular spheres of interest are the history of the Early Modern herbal, the cultural history of useful and medicinal plants, and plant symbolism in art. He has published extensively on pharmaceutical and botanical history and is the author of TASCHEN's The Garden at Eichstatt, The Lilies, Leonhart Fuchs: The New Herbal of 1543, Pomona Britannica, The Temple of Flora, and The Vegetable Garden.