Comments from Mr. PGC: Throughout history, many people have made lasting contributions to the world of plants. In these pages, we hope to pay tribute to some of them. Our concentration will be primarily on those who have introduced plants to the gardening world, those who have helped spread the word about gardening and those who have made significant contributions to landscaping and landscaping design around the world.

This list will be constantly growing as we add new names. If you have someone who you think should be on the list, please send us an Email.
 

From 1912 to 1943, Beatrix Farrand acted as the consulting landscape archetect for Princeton University. She also worked with campus designs at Yale and the University of Chicago. She was the only woman involved in the creation of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Her designs were used at Dartington Hall and her beautifully documented city garden of Dunbarton Oaks, Washington DC.

Botanical writer and plant-hunter, he was born in London and brought up in Ingleborough where he became interested in rock garden plants. He brought his personality to the page with My Rock Garden and The English Rock Garden. He died on a Burmese mountain.

Plants discovered by him include Gentiana farrerii, Cypripedium farrerii and Viburnum fragrans.

Nicholas Forestier redesigned the garden of Bagatelle in the Bois-de-Boulogne in Paris. He designed many gardens in Spain and also worked in the USA and South America.

George Forrest was the greatest of all collectors of rhododendrons. He is credited with introducing hundreds of species from China and Tibet to Edinburgh Botanic Garden, including R. giganteum and R. sinogrande. He also specialized in primulas.

He collected over 30,000 herbarium specimens. It is for the genus Rhododendron that he is most remembered, and over 300 new ones were introduced, as well as camellias, magnolias, Himalayan poppies, lilies, primulas and gentians (including Gentiana sinoornata). Primula forrestii and many other plants have been named in his honor. These plants were of such horticultural potential that they aroused a fever of interest in gardening circles.

He introduced a beautiful silver fir and a snakebark maple, both called forrestii including Iris forrestii, Hypericum forrestii, Hemerocallis forrestii, Abies forrestii, Hypericum forrestii.

Forrest's discoveries include:

  • Clematis: chrysocoma and forrestii

  • Rhododendron: souliei, sulfureum, trichocladum, neriiflorum, taliense, beesianum, irroratum, rubiginosum and others

  • Lilium: thomsonianum, giganteum, delavayi and ochraceum

  • Pieris forrestii

  • Pleione: delavayii, grandiflora and forrestii

  • Primula: malacoides, beesiana and many others.

William Forsyth from Old Meldrum, Scotland, became a distinguished horticulturist and was appointed Chief Superintendent of the Royal Gardens at Kensington and St James' Palace in 1784. In 1802 he published a "Treatise on the Culture and Management of Fruit Trees" which became a best-seller in its day. He is best remembered now for the family of plants known as "Forsythia".

After studying at the Edinburgh Botanic Garden, and at the Horticultural Society gardens at Chiswick, Fortune was sent to China by the Horticultural Society in 1843. He was the first collector in China to have relative freedom and he introduced many essential garden plants to the western world.

His trees included the false larch, the Chinese plum yew, the umbrella pine and the Cryptomeria. In 1848 he returned to China and sent seeds and plants of the tea tree to India, thereby becoming the founder of the India Tea industry.

Garden plants introduced by him include: Forsythia viridissima, jasminium nudiflorum, anemone japonica, Dielytra spectabilis, Kerria japonica, the white-flowered wisteria, Euonymous fortunei, Viburnum plicatum, Trachycarpus fortunei,  Cephalotaxus fortunei, Hosta fortunei, Rhododendron fortunei, Mahonia fortunei, Pleioblastus fortunei.

A Scotsman, John Fraser started business in London as a linen-draper near the Chelsea Physic Garden. He gave up his business to become a plant collector and explored the southern Appalachians of the U.S. in the late 1700's.

Among the plants he introduced was Magnolia fraserii.

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