For 400 years there has been a special relationship between Britain and America in many aspects of life, not least in gardening. From the early settlers taking their familiar English plants to the New World and early plant-hunters bringing back exciting new plants for English gardens to the 21st-century British infatuation with "prairie gardening," ideas and plants have been crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic. Exploring these influences, Richard Bisgrove's illustrated chronicle attempts to answer that thorny question—is the English cottage garden an American invention?