Information Centre

Gardening heritage

The Lindley Library's historical and contemporary collections document Britain's gardening heritage. Our Research Guides outline some of the literature that has shaped the history of gardens and gardening, and provide an introduction to these subjects. The first in the series looks at plant names and naming.

The RHS Gardens Oral History Project

The Oral History Project records the memories and feelings of those involved with the many aspects of the RHS gardens and to build a vivid picture of the past.All material will be preserved as a reference resource for use in research, publication, education, lectures and broadcasting.

Access the archive

Reading Lists

The Library produces a number of reading lists on gardening topics. These are selected from the Library catalogue and are a snapshot of books in the collection at that time. You can find examples of reading lists below.

• Composting (pdf)
• Apples (pdf)
• Cookery books by gardeners (pdf)
• Climbers (pdf)
• Fruit and vegetable gardening (pdf)
• Gardening in cold climates (pdf)
• History of wildlife gardening (pdf)

To view the above Adobe Acrobat .pdf documents you will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader. We strongly recommend that you download the latest version to prevent problems viewing the documents. This is available free from the Adobe website. Click on the logo to go to the website.

The Library also produces booklists that track new additions in selected subjects. The lists are automatically updated when a new book is added to the collections. You can find a full list of subjects in our Library catalogue “Books about…” section.

If you can’t find a list on your chosen subject, you can request one from library@rhs.org.uk or compile one yourself by searching our Library catalogue.

You can also use the Library catalogue “New books” section to see lists of books added to our main libraries this month.