The Shell Guide to Gardens
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK on 07.12.07
I found this while I was trawling through a second hand book shop - The Shell Guide to Gardens. It looks like oil companies have been trying to associate themselves with anything that makes them appear green and natural for quite a while.
It was published in 1977, and the inside jacket describes the book like this, "This book has two parts: a concise but colorful and informative history of four centuries of garden-making in Britain and Ireland; and a detailed but convenient guide to over two hundred of the finest, though not necessarily the best known, gardens open to the public."
I'll be honest, I haven't read it. It's a little dry, and despite the claim that it's a colorful book most of the pictures are in black and white. Perhaps I should drop this early example of green-washing in a recycle bin. ::Flickr
The Shell County Guides were a major publishing success from the 1930s to the 1980s in Britain with John Betjeman and John Piper as general editors. It's a lovely series, very collectable.
Books like this could hardly be called "greenwashing", as you call it. The demonization of the petroleum industry and it's companies is a fairly recent phenomenon, mostly among urban trendy liberals. In it's day, that book was merely considered a nice publication about gardens. Get a grip.
Think about it. The list of gardens is intended sell more gasoline by encouraging the readers to drive more.