The Head Gardeners

Sir Joseph Paxton, designer of the Crystal Palace, and Angus McAllister, the iron-willed ruler of the gardens at Blandings Castle, and are just two examples, one historical and one fictional, of an extraordinary group of men, the head gardeners who flourished in the golden age of the British country house in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Only the very best of the uneducated country lads who were taken on as garden boys survived the apprenticeship of up to fourteen years, but those that did were men of strong character who had educated themselves in the sciences of botany, etymology, plant breeding, plant physiology, surveying, perspective drawing and much else. As well as ensuring that the great houses were supplied with flowers, fruit and vegetables the year round – pineapples by the dozens, peaches and apricots by the thousand were harvested from their greenhouses - they learned to cultivate the host of exotic plants that their employers imported from the ends of the earth. They invented the trade of floristry. They wrote best-selling books and published the first gardening magazines. The fame and reputation of great houses and their owners depended upon the skills of the head gardeners and competition for their services could be intense.

In their hey-day the great head gardeners ran what were, in effect, large horticultural businesses which might employ fifty or more staff and have annual expenditures that would run into the millions in today’s terms. Yet, often poorly paid and poorly treated, the head gardeners are the forgotten heroes of horticulture; for while it was Sir this, Lord that, and Earl the other who paid the bills and took the credit, it was these men who actually did the work and made so many gardens great. And were it not for these men our gardens today would be that much the poorer.

Hardback ISBN-10: 1845132831
Paperback ISBN-10: 1845134117