For city dwellers who cannot get out to the countryside, one solution is to bring the countryside into the city. In the first-century AD, the Roman poet Martial coined the phrase
rus in urbe, in envious admiration of his rich friend Sparsus’s city villa, secluded and free from the constant roar of urban life. As city populations have grown, so has the need for ‘countryside in the city’ and its benefits. Different eras have offered similar solutions. In his pamphlet Fumifugium (1661), John Evelyn proposed making hedged plantations of ‘fragrant Shrubs, Trees, and Flowers’, which would give ‘Health, Profit, and Beauty’ to counteract the air pollution in London. By the late 18