Walafrid Strabo was born about 808 during the later years of the Emperor Charlemagne in an area of southwest Germany called Alemannia. He was left as a child by his parents around the age of eight in the monastery school of Reichenau Abbey, located on an island in Lake Constance, where he learned to read and write Latin, and prepared for a life to be spent in holy orders. He became abbot of the same monastery in 838, and it was probably then that he wrote his gardening book.

Cultural Writing. Gardening. Widely regarded as the first gardening book in European history, and currently the only translation available in English, this book was written in the ninth century by Walafrid Strabo, Abbot of the Carolingian monastery at Reichenau Island. It tells us what our medieval gardener is growing in his garden, explains the benefits and medicinal properties of the plants, and gives an idea of how they are to be looked after. James Mitchell introduces and translates this classic from the original Latin hexameters, and S.F. Bay Area gardening columnist Richard Schwarzenberger provides a foreword.