Agricultural History Review, Volume 66 Part 1 (2018), pp. 1–17

This paper explores the question of how much private gardens contributed to the supply of vegetables and fruit available for purchase in late medieval and early modern England. After an introduction describing the sale of crops from many monastic gardens in the later Middle Ages, the paper covers the surplus traded from gardens of both rich and poor in England to the early nineteenth century. Sources used include household accounts, estate records, gardeners’ contracts, market records, tithe disputes and contemporary writings on gardening. Overall quantification of the sales of surplus produce is not possible from the data so far discovered but the diverse sources of information give an impression of a significant level of trade in surplus produce of all types: cheap vegetables and fruit sold in the open markets for general consumption and luxury items, pineapples, grapes and the like emanating from stoves and hothouses of the rich. 

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