The Manchester Botanical and Horticultural Society was founded in 1827 to allow members the opportunity to study botany and horticulture and to create an ambience "not unlike a fashionable resort". Today the Garden is all but forgotten and only the former entrance gates and a street name remain. This book, illustrated with many contemporary engravings and postcards, charts the history of the Garden; its international reputation in horticultural developments and many floral triumphs; its recurrent financial crises and ultimate degeneration into a venue for cat and dog shows and final conversion to a doomed amusement park.
Ann Brooks studied Pharmacy at Manchester University followed by a varied career in hospital pharmacy. Her great love of gardening and the history of the gardening movement led her to return to academia and she completed a PhD in 2007 on The Manchester Botanic Garden and the Movement for Subscription Botanic Gardens. She is the co-author of a number of papers on the history of Manchester and is currently writing a book on the movement for subscription botanic gardens and conducting research on Victorian villa gardens.

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Abbreviations used in text
• Acknowledgements
• Preface: 'A Veritable Eden'
• 1 Manchester, 1822
• 2 Gardening in Manchester 1790-1887
• 3 A Botanic Garden for Manchester
• 4 The Membership 'Individuals of the highest respectability'
• 5 Creating the Garden
• 6 The Glasshouses 'Who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too.'
• 7 Staffing the Garden
• 8 'It is not a church, not a palazzo, not a chateau' 1839-1854
• 9 'Art Triumphed over Nature' 1857
• 10 '... The Darkness Before the Dawn' 1858-1865
• 11 'The Genius Behind the Machine' 1865-1887
• 12 'Our Poverty and not our Will Consented' 1889-1894
• 13 Struggling On 1895-1907
• 14 Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Occupational Analysis of the membership
• Appendix 2 The Herbarium of the Manchester Botanical and Horticultural Society