Vanishing Landscapes

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What to expect

'Rich and replenishing ... I felt lovesick for it after it was done' ELEANOR CATTON, Booker Prize-winning author

'A fascinating, original story' TLS

'I really loved this book' JENN ASHWORTH

'A real treasure' ROWAN WILLIAMS, former Archbishop of Canterbury

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In the past, we were deeply bound to all things green and growing. We once knew the landscape and the plants around us as well as we knew ourselves. But today our relationship with plants and nature has grown distant - we have lost a sense of plants as precious.

Vanishing Landscapes tells the story of how plants disappeared from our daily lives one by one. First were apples, then household medicines like saffron, cloth dyes like woad, grapes for making wine, and then, eventually, the timber and reeds we used to build our houses and the wheat we grew for our bread. In their place came the first corporation, the first factory, the banking system, private property, global trade, and modern medicine.

The history of these plants shows us how we became modern, but it also shows a path to recover some of what we have lost. In Vanishing Landscapes, Bonnie Lander Johnson goes in search of the old life and the people who are still connected to the land. She meets farmers in Ireland, wine makers in Yorkshire and cloth dyers in the Highlands. She cuts reeds in the watery Norfolk fens and camps overnight in a West Country orchard to gaze up at an unchanging sky.

Vanishing Landscapes brings to life a world we never knew but still long for, and reminds us that it's not too late to find a way back.

©2025 Bonnie Lander Johnson (P)2025 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critics Review

A rich and replenishing work that traces the roots, seeds, and cuttings of our modern sensibilities, weaving together the story of seven species to show us what was lost and what might be regained, and to remind us that before land became mere property, it was earth, life, livelihood, commons, and creation. I felt lovesick for it after it was done.
ELEANOR CATTON
I really loved this book. It's full of longing and nostalgia, but there's a clear-sightedness here too, an acknowledgement of modernity's gifts as well as its losses. Vanishing Landscapes conveys a delicate, informed state of enchantment - as much celebration as elegy. It's a bittersweet love letter to what we have lost, and what exists around us in the here and now.
JENN ASHWORTH
In this intriguing history, Bonnie Lander Johnson interrogates seven plants to understand how Britain shed its medieval mindset and became modern in just two centuries ... This is a fascinating, original story, informed by the author's profession as an academic and her interest in writing fiction. Johnson roots her grand narrative in visits to spirited individuals across Britain and Ireland who practise the old ways of growing and making, introducing us to the sounds, smells and colours of particular landscapes. Wry asides keep nostalgia in check ... By emphasizing what we have lost as well as gained in becoming modern, Vanishing Landscapes challenges accepted views of progress.
TLS
Vanishing Landscapes offers a unique interweaving of insights about culture, cult and cultivation. From the history of cider apples and the deforestation caused by early modern warfare to the impact of republicanism on wine-drinking, this is a brilliantly ambitious and authentic cultural history. A real treasure.
ROWAN WILLIAMS, former Archbishop of Canterbury
Such a clever construct using seven plants to embody a story that crosses counties, countries, and centuries. We witness, with great dramatic effect, the impacts of big political decisions being played out at a local level in the lives of ordinary people. When I read this, I began to realise that I'd known only half a narrative, and this fills in so many gaps in my understanding.
Derek Niemann

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