Anna Pavord

Anna Pavord traces the cultural and botanical history of a single flower in The Tulip. Bloomsbury presents the work as the result of six years of research into the plant’s movement from the wild landscapes of Central Asia through the Ottoman Empire and into European gardens and markets. Her account combines horticultural observation with social history, showing how cultivation, collecting, trade, and fashion changed the tulip’s meaning over centuries. Pavord has written about gardens for decades and contributed a long-running gardening column to The Independent. Her other books include The Naming of Names, which examines the early history of plant taxonomy, The Curious Gardener, and Landskipping, an exploration of British landscape. She has also presented gardening programs on BBC radio and served on the National Trust Gardens Panel. That wider career places The Tulip within sustained work on how people name, grow, value, and interpret plants.