Travels with my plants
Friday, 31 August 2007
Diane Summers
At the foot of the Secret Intelligence Service's headquarters in London, M16's ziggurat is a well-known landmark to those negotiating the giant one-way system on the south bank of the Thames.
It is hard to imagine, as the traffic thunders past, that this was once open countryside. Just south, among today's Portuguese tapas bars on the South Lambeth Road, is the site of the house, orchards and extensive gardens of the famous John Tradescants, father and son.
This remarkable pair, the subjects of Jennifer Potter's scholarly dual biography Strange Blooms, was responsible for the introduction to 17th-century England of many of the plants still in our gardens today. They were also passionate collectors of all that was weird and wonderful from around the globe.
"Their eclectic collection jostled objects as diverse as the hand of a mermaid, the testicles of a beaver, the 'robe of the King of Virginia' and 'the passion of Christ carved very daintily on a plumstone'," recounts Potter.
The times they lived in were marked by political upheaval, plague and civil unrest; alchemy and witchcraft sat alongside the new sciences; and geographical discoveries were shaking confidence in the accepted wisdoms in every sphere. Potter uses the Tradescants to explore these themes and tell the story of those extraordinary times, in an account that will appeal to history and garden enthusiasts, and garden historians in particular.
John Tradescant senior is thought to have been born in Suffolk around 1570 and he may have been of Dutch descent. He found his way by 1610 into the employment of Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, as gardener at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, north of London.
Tradescant travelled to the Netherlands and Paris to stock Cecil's glorious new gardens with many plants not before seen in England. After Cecil's death, he eventually moved on to Canterbury to work as gardener to Edward Lord Wotton at St Augustine's Abbey. While Tradescant the elder never journeyed to the new world, unlike his son, he invested in the Virginia Company and, through it, imported further plants unknown until then in England.
In the same period, he joined a diplomatic expedition to Archangel, collecting more plants along the way, and then got involved in an unsuccessful military expedition to crush the Barbary pirates of Algiers.
His next employer, the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Lord Admiral of England, a favourite of King James, was a prodigious collector of works of art. He was aided by the wonderfully named Balthazar Gerbier, who toured the art capitals of Europe buying up treasures on his master's behalf.
Tradescant fed the Duke's appetite for collecting by gathering together treasures of a different sort, in particular the flora and fauna of North America and west Africa.
It was the late 1620s when Tradescant and his family moved into the South Lambeth country house and planted gardens and orchards with exotic specimens. By then he had amassed his own extraordinary collection. At the age of 60 he was appointed gardener to King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria at Oatlands palace, near Weybridge in Surrey.
John Tradescant junior is perhaps the less interesting of the two: he consolidated rather than pioneered and struggled to emerge from his father's shadow. But he was successful in two particular areas. First, he journeyed to the new world, plant hunting and bringing back 200 or so new specimens. Second, he documented the family collections and did much to aid their survival -- what remains can be seen in Oxford.
Meanwhile, on Lambeth Palace Road, near the oneway system and M16 building, is the Museum of Garden History. It is housed in the former church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, where the Tradescants are buried. A garden in the churchyard is planted with flowers and shrubs the Tradescants would have known and loved -- a small reminder of the celebrated marvel that was once just down the road.
.....................................
FT Syndication Service
At the foot of the Secret Intelligence Service's headquarters in London, M16's ziggurat is a well-known landmark to those negotiating the giant one-way system on the south bank of the Thames.
It is hard to imagine, as the traffic thunders past, that this was once open countryside. Just south, among today's Portuguese tapas bars on the South Lambeth Road, is the site of the house, orchards and extensive gardens of the famous John Tradescants, father and son.
This remarkable pair, the subjects of Jennifer Potter's scholarly dual biography Strange Blooms, was responsible for the introduction to 17th-century England of many of the plants still in our gardens today. They were also passionate collectors of all that was weird and wonderful from around the globe.
"Their eclectic collection jostled objects as diverse as the hand of a mermaid, the testicles of a beaver, the 'robe of the King of Virginia' and 'the passion of Christ carved very daintily on a plumstone'," recounts Potter.
The times they lived in were marked by political upheaval, plague and civil unrest; alchemy and witchcraft sat alongside the new sciences; and geographical discoveries were shaking confidence in the accepted wisdoms in every sphere. Potter uses the Tradescants to explore these themes and tell the story of those extraordinary times, in an account that will appeal to history and garden enthusiasts, and garden historians in particular.
John Tradescant senior is thought to have been born in Suffolk around 1570 and he may have been of Dutch descent. He found his way by 1610 into the employment of Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, as gardener at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, north of London.
Tradescant travelled to the Netherlands and Paris to stock Cecil's glorious new gardens with many plants not before seen in England. After Cecil's death, he eventually moved on to Canterbury to work as gardener to Edward Lord Wotton at St Augustine's Abbey. While Tradescant the elder never journeyed to the new world, unlike his son, he invested in the Virginia Company and, through it, imported further plants unknown until then in England.
In the same period, he joined a diplomatic expedition to Archangel, collecting more plants along the way, and then got involved in an unsuccessful military expedition to crush the Barbary pirates of Algiers.
His next employer, the 1st Duke of Buckingham and Lord Admiral of England, a favourite of King James, was a prodigious collector of works of art. He was aided by the wonderfully named Balthazar Gerbier, who toured the art capitals of Europe buying up treasures on his master's behalf.
Tradescant fed the Duke's appetite for collecting by gathering together treasures of a different sort, in particular the flora and fauna of North America and west Africa.
It was the late 1620s when Tradescant and his family moved into the South Lambeth country house and planted gardens and orchards with exotic specimens. By then he had amassed his own extraordinary collection. At the age of 60 he was appointed gardener to King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria at Oatlands palace, near Weybridge in Surrey.
John Tradescant junior is perhaps the less interesting of the two: he consolidated rather than pioneered and struggled to emerge from his father's shadow. But he was successful in two particular areas. First, he journeyed to the new world, plant hunting and bringing back 200 or so new specimens. Second, he documented the family collections and did much to aid their survival -- what remains can be seen in Oxford.
Meanwhile, on Lambeth Palace Road, near the oneway system and M16 building, is the Museum of Garden History. It is housed in the former church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, where the Tradescants are buried. A garden in the churchyard is planted with flowers and shrubs the Tradescants would have known and loved -- a small reminder of the celebrated marvel that was once just down the road.
.....................................
FT Syndication Service