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marveled at the results. He spent hours inspecting his tulip terraces, discussing breeding techniques with his head gardeners, and showing off his finest blooms to foreign ambassadors. To help protect his beloved, delicate plants from the unpredictable British weather, William oversaw the construction of grand, innovative structures known as glasshouses and orangeries. The Orangery at Kensington Palace, designed by Wren, was a masterpiece of early horticultural engineering. It featured massive, south-facing windows designed to capture every single scrap of pale British sunlight, thick brick walls to retain heat, and an advanced underfloor heating system. During the cold winter months, hundreds of exotic orange trees, bay trees, and rare myrtles, planted in magnificent, painted wooden tubs, were wheeled inside the warm sanctuary of the Orangery. In the spring, they were wheeled back out into the gardens, arranged in perfect, geometric rows that mirrored the architectural lines of the palace. This was gardening on an industrial, highly disciplined scale. It required a small army of laborers, waterers, and weeders, all working under the strict, demanding supervision of London and Wise. The royal gardens had become a highly efficient machine, designed to produce absolute, unnatural perfection. As with any major cultural shift initiated by a monarch, the British public watched William's botanical obsession with a healthy dose of skepticism, seasoned with their trademark dry humor. The English had a long-standing tradition of viewing foreign influences with deep suspicion, and William's court was undeniably, aggressively Dutch. The king surrounded himself with Dutch advisors, spoke with a thick Dutch accent, and spent his summers away from England, fighting campaigns on the continent or relaxing in his spectacular gardens at Het Loo in the Netherlands. Satirists and pamphleteers quickly seized upon the king's obsession. Witty broadsides circulated in the coffee houses of London, poking gentle, and sometimes not-so-gentle, fun at the monarch who seemed more interested in the welfare of his boxwood hedges than the concerns of his subjects. One popular joke suggested that if the French were to invade England, King William would likely surrender the country, provided he was allowed to keep his favorite orange trees. Others pointed out the sheer, absurd cost of the royal gardening projects. At a time when the nation was heavily taxed to pay for the expensive, ongoing wars against France, the king was spending thousands of pounds importing Dutch dirt and paying laborers to move hills from one side of Hampton Court to the other. Yet, despite the grumbling and the satirical verses, something remarkable began to happen. The British public, in their own quiet, resilient way, began to copy the king. The aristocracy and the wealthy merchant classes, eager to show their loyalty to the new regime and demonstrate their own refined taste, began to transform their own estates. Across the English countryside, ancient, untamed gardens were systematically demolished to make way for formal canals, geometric parterres, and neatly clipped yew trees. The nursery business exploded. George London and Henry Wise's nursery in Brompton, located on the site of what is now the Natural History and Science Museums in London, became one of the most successful commercial enterprises in the country. They supplied thousands of boxwood plants, lime trees, and, of course, tulip bulbs to eager landowners up and down the country. But this green revolution was not confined to the wealthy elite. The common people of England, who had spent generations surviving civil wars, plagues, and fires, proved remarkably adept at adapting this new horticultural fashion to their own modest lives. While a humble cottage owner could not afford a grand, Wren-designed orangery or a mathematically