Toby Musgrave - The Head Gardeners. Heroes of Horticulture

It is the Pipe Rolls (or royal accounts) from the reigns of Henry III, and subsequently Edward I, that contain the first named English gardener one Edmund the Gardener, who received 2/ pence per day for his work at Windsor Castle (Berkshire) between 1256 and 1277. Edmunds epithet gives his profession but tells little of what he actually did; indeed for several hundred years after the Norman Conquest, the word gardener was widely used as a general term. Before 1606 and the Royal Charter that established the Company of Gardeners, a gardener could be anyone of various skills and often diverse social standing,

In the following three centuries, however, the horticulture industry evolved, diversified and became more sophisticated; so that by the turn of the nineteenth century there were demarcated but inter-related specialisms. The market gardener grew edible crops for market, while the landscape gardener designed gardens. Orchardmen produced and sold fruit trees, seedsmen sold seed, and florists raised and sold new varieties of a limited range of bulbs and fibrous-rooted plants, which became known as Florists Flowers. Nurserymen supplied a wider range of ornamental plants, be they run of the mill varieties or more sought-after items such as large specimens or rare plants from abroad. And the master or head gardener was a man charged with the responsibility of managing, maintaining and developing both the ornamental and productive gardens associated with a large country house estate.

However, one aspect of the head gardeners story that changes little down the centuries is the paucity of information about the men themselves. Not surprisingly, the closer we come to the modern day, the more information was generated and has survived. But for the largest part of the past millennium or so, the head gardener remains an unsung and elusive hero his name and something of his works may have survived, but little about the man himself.

What is a matter of record is that the head gardener emerged as a man of influence within the spheres of horticulture and botany during the seventeenth and, more notably, the eighteenth century. Certain head gardeners did become famous but often for another reason: in the eighteenth century, for example, Capability Brown as a landscape designer, Philip Miller an author, and James Gordon a nurseryman. But it was in the nineteenth century that the head gardeners star rose to its zenith, a position it held until the outbreak of the First World War. The stereotype of a head gardener of this period is a ferocious-looking, conspicuously bewhiskered chap, sporting a bowler hat, waistcoat and long apron; his fearsome demeanour consistent with his position as autonomous ruler of a large domain who terrorised his staff and employer alike. The engravings and, later, the photographs, of head gardeners of this time do nothing to belie this myth; nor does the behaviour of some notorious miscreants. In spite of their formidable appearance, however, the vast majority of head gardeners were honest men who worked exceedingly hard for a poor wage. Thus another truism that has remained constant down the centuries is that head gardeners do not so much have a job as a vocation a vocation which is undertaken for the love of the work and certainly not for the financial reward! The names of many of the nineteenth centurys head gardeners are a matter of record, but with the possible exception of Sir Joseph Paxton of Chatsworth (Derbyshire) have been forgotten. In many instances, their gardens are still extant, albeit shadows of their former glories Battersea Park (London), Belvoir (Leicestershire), Bicton Park (Devon), Cliveden (Buckinghamshire), Elvaston Castle (Derbyshire) and Shrubland Park (Suffolk) to name but half-a-dozen. But even though head gardeners of some of the centurys finest gardens were stars within their gardening world, who today remembers John Gibson, William Ingram, James Barnes, John Fleming, William Barron and Donald Beaton, or what they achieved?