In the competitive atmosphere of the court of Queen Elizabeth I, political rivals stopped at nothing to curry favor with the queen. Those who hosted the queen at their own palaces—especially her favorites, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and William Cecil, Baron of Burghley—oversaw extravagant gardening and landscaping projects and planned elaborate outdoor entertainments to impress her. Martyn, a UK scholar of landscape and garden history, is well suited to catalog the Elizabethan projects and entertainments and to chart the transformations that took place in English gardens during the Elizabethan era. She uses gardens as a lens through which to view history, offering an enlightening perspective on Elizabeth's reign. While it is presumed readers know something about Elizabeth and her court, the reader with no prior knowledge of the queen or her reign will quickly become acclimatized to the subject. Those looking for a more straightforward history of gardening during this period will be disappointed, as the book contains a great deal of biographical information. VERDICT A charming mix of gardening history and biography, related with evocative prose, this will delight those interested in gardening history, Queen Elizabeth's life, or Elizabethan history. (With black-and-white Elizabethan illustrations, but no photographs of gardens.)—Sharon E. Reidt, Marlboro Coll. Lib., VT