Look at the bestsellers list of any bookshop and alongside the celebrity cookbooks and edge-of-your-seat thrillers, you'll always find biographies.
Whether it stems from a genuine interest in the subject matter or just plain nosiness, most of us are fascinated by other people's lives. You might be too busy out in the garden at the moment to even consider a spot of light reading, but a newly f
inished project by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford DNB) could be just the thing to tempt you. Over the last year, the team behind this online resource has been busy researching the lives of 50 individuals who have shaped British gardening.
"We chose gardening for two reasons," says Dr Philip Carter, publications editor. "It's a profession that Britons are very good at and have been very active in since the 1500s onwards, and also it's a fantastic form of recreation that is widely practised across the country." The resulting biographies provide insight into particular gardens, places and people and also shed light on the origins of plants and gardening styles. Carter explains that to be chosen for inclusion in the Oxford DNB, individuals must have contributed sufficiently and significantly to British life, earning themselves a place in the national record.
Many Scottish gardeners appear on the list – some are familiar names, others less well known. An individual who changed the face of one of Scotland's best-known gardens was William McNab (1780-1848). One of 12 children born to an Ayrshire farmer, he became a gardener's apprentice aged 16 and began to work his way up the ranks, joining the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1801. Within two years he was foreman and won the approval of George III, for his horticultural skills and for his involvement in the Kew volunteer infantry, created to help repel any possible French invasion. The Oxford DNB reveals that McNab wrote to a friend about how Kew had gained an important collection of plants from South America – destined for Paris but "acquired" from the French by English privateers. In 1812, McNab was recruited by the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh and went on to oversee the move from Leith Walk to Inverleith Park – a massive undertaking which included transporting 100-year-old trees to their new site a mile away.
"In terms of which gardeners have the most colourful lives, it often happens when they get caught up in Royal patronage," says Carter. "There was Charles M'Intosh, a Perthshire-born gardener who was employed by the King of Belgium and worked across continental Europe, as well as meeting Victoria and Albert when they came up to Scotland. Working for royalty is one way in which people end up having very vibrant lives." It's an assessment that most definitely applies to Thomas Blaikie (1751-1838), a landscape gardener and plant collector from Corstorphine Hill, Edinburgh. Blaikie established his reputation with a plant collecting tour of Switzerland in 1775, at a time when the Alps were little-known to travellers and seen as a dangerous destination. He sent back 3,500 plants and cuttings of 440 species.
According to the Oxford DNB, Blaikie became a favourite gardener of the French aristocracy and royal family, developing a friendship with Louis and Marie Antoinette. However, come the revolution he was left near penniless, as his royal clients met an unsavoury fate. Reinvented as Citizen Blaikie, the versatile gardener became a farm manager at the Lauraguais estate, supplying seed potatoes – a crop much favoured by the revolutionary government. He eventually settled in Paris and continued to take commissions until well into his eighties.
Taken individually, each of these gardener's lives makes for fascinating reading, but for Dr Carter, the research project produced some particular themes. "It's remarkable what patterns emerge," he says, "and one of the things we've identified is the strength of the scientific element of the Scottish gardeners. I think that probably goes back to the quality of 18th and 19th-century Scottish schooling, the parish school system, and access to university for people from lower down the social scales." Dr Carter explains that while a number of the gardeners in England might have started off as boys working on estates, learning their trade from the bottom up, a lot of the Scots had greater scientific training and were able to apply that to their work.
While some of those included in the Oxford DNB received international acclaim, others were more local heroes. "Quite a number of these people were doing their gardening in their spare time," says Dr Carter. "For example, Henry Eckford, a Scottish-born subject who moved to Shropshire, effectively rescued the sweet pea from obscurity and was dubbed the "father of the sweet pea". He was a clergyman first and foremost but also had this interest." Most of the notable gardeners wrote for journals and periodicals or published books, creating a documentary record which helped the researchers at Oxford DNB to piece together the details of their lives.
Another plant hero was Peter Barr (1826-1909), a Lanarkshire gardener who restored the daffodil as a popular feature in British gardens in the late 19th century, after it had fallen out of favour. "It's down to individuals that some plants are prominent and liked today," says Carter. Of course not every plant introduction proves entirely popular. Christopher Leyland, a Northumberland estate-owner who became involved in landscaping after a career in engineering, was the man behind the Leylandii conifer. "To be fair to him, he combined two different strains of conifer and it was perfect for his estate because it was a large windswept place," says Carter, "it's not his fault that people then go on and put them up in small gardens."
Whether you intend to see Dorothy Renton's alpine designs at Branklyn Garden, plan on taking in Thomas Kennedy's work at Culzean Castle or want to try growing Samuel Arnott's variety of snowdrop, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is the place to find out about the people behind the plants.
• Visit the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography at www.oxforddnb.com
• Subscriptions start at £26 & VAT for one month or it can be accessed free via most public library memberships.
• For a host of exciting new plant products, visit
www.vanmeuwen.com/scotsman