The Passionate Planters

Image: Cedars of Lebanon planted at Chelsea Physic Garden in 1683; watercolour by Fuge.

How Britain Became a Nation of Gardeners.
Delightful and informative article from THE LADY.
Link

“I found the Gardener’s Dictionary , first published in 1731 by Philip Miller, and was most surprised to find just how many plants had been introduced into Britain in the 18th century. There was a network – of English merchants, American farmer John Bartram and famous Age of Enlightenment figures, such as Carl Linnaeus, Benjamin Franklin, Hans Sloane and Joseph Banks – which stretched across the world, importing and selling plants by the thousand.”

It was their stories that inspired her to write her gem of a book, The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession . It was on a mission on behalf of the great botantist Carl Linnaeus, that Daniel Solander arrived on our shores in 1760 and wrote back: “The English are all more or less gardeners.”

Wulf explains that this came with the spread of the British Empire, which brought access to plants as never before.