The Plant Review
magazine published by the Royal Horticultural Society
The Plant Review, published quarterly by the Royal Horticultural Society, is a 68-page magazine containing "fascinating in-depth articles for everyone who loves plants". Its authoritative articles are written by acknowledged experts on plant-related subjects, and include plant profiles, horticulture, botany and the development of garden plants, focusing on ornamental plants grown in temperate gardens. It also reflects the scientific work of the RHS, as well as research conducted by other horticultural and botanical institutions and individuals. First published in 1979 as The Plantsman, it was renamed The Plant Review from September 2019.
The RHS website describes The Plant Review as "Written by people who know and grow plants, each 68-page, colour issue balances an exciting mix of news, gardens and profiles of plants you will long to grow".
Subject matter
Its subject matter includes:
Profiles and evaluations of plant genera, species and cultivars of horticultural merit
Recent plant introductions and descriptions of new plants
New or advanced cultivation and propagation techniques
Detailed accounts and findings from RHS trials
Developments in plant taxonomy and changes to names of garden plants
Plant exploration and travel
Opinions and viewpoints of prominent horticultural figures
Conservation of garden plants and wild plants of horticultural interest
Advances in plant breeding and development of new garden plants
Profiles of plant experts, breeders and horticultural personalities
Botanical illustration and its development
History of the magazine
The Plantsman
The Plantsman magazine was first published in June 1979. The quarterly began as a scholarly spin-off from The Garden, the monthly journal of the RHS, which was then widening its editorial scope and popularizing its approach, in response to the wider audience provided by the society's rapidly increasing membership. Between its inception in 1979 and its full take-over by the RHS in 1994 The Plantsman was published by New Perspectives Publishing Ltd (later Home and Law Publishing Ltd, then HHL Publishing Ltd), in association with the RHS.
In his introduction to the first edition of The Plantsman, its editorial director, Hugh Johnson, noted that the changing editorial policy of The Garden had meant:
"…leaving out, or at any rate abbreviating, the sort of scholarly, unhurried, lovingly minute studies of plants which are the true meat of specialist horticultural literature."
He described The Plantsman as the solution to this editorial quandary, and continued:
"Its intention is to supplement the monthly Journal with quarterly studies for the gardener whose passion for plants will never be satisfied—the plantsman of the title."
The first editor of The Plantsman was Elspeth Napier. Among the contributors to the first issue were Christopher Brickell (then Director of RHS Garden, Wisley, later Director General of the RHS), Roy Elliott (then Editor of the quarterly Bulletin of the Alpine Garden Society), Lawrence D Hills, founder (and then Director) of the Henry Doubleday Research Association, and David McClintock, botanist and writer of the best-selling Collins Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers.
The magazine was printed in black and white, with one colour plate as a frontispiece (as well as many finely detailed line illustrations) until February 1994.
The public source identifies “The Plant Review” as magazine published by the Royal Horticultural Society. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Plant, Review and magazine.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “The Plant Review”, the useful work is to connect “magazine published by the Royal Horticultural Society” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17148454. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1979, 2019 and 1994.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Plant Review”, its source revision and the description used here.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “The Plant Review” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.