In the spring of 1829 a 20 year old trainee gardener from Frankfurt came to  Britain to visit gardens and nurseries. He  met John Claudius Loudon, the garden writer who recommended places to visit and then asked  him to write an account of his trip for the Gardener’s Magazine.

His views give an interesting insight into what was going on in commercial nurseries and several large estates around the country, and the  trip also seems to have been quite influential in his later career back in Germany

So over to Jacob Rinz…

Jacob  was born on 28 April 1809,  the eldest son of a well established  Frankfurt gardener Sebastian Rinz. Sebastian was in charge of the city’s parks and gardens and had laid out  a Jardin Anglais two miles in length running around its former ramparts. He also ran a successful commercial nursery and seed business.

In the days before German unification Frankfurt was an independent sovereign city-state and   exercised strict control over citizenship and trade.  Jacob was training with his father but before he gained his qualifications and the right to run a gardening business in the city he decided to visit gardens abroad even though he had ” seen comparatively few of the gardens of my own country. ”   From 1827 he travelled through France and the Netherlands before in April 1829 setting sail for Britain.

I’d guess he must have been fairly fluent in English and a reader of  Loudon’s relatively new  Gardener’s Magazine  because it seems  he had written  introducing himself  to Loudon beforehand.  Loudon often wrote about foreign gardens and covered Frankfurt in 1829 when Jacob who he described as “a beautiful ichnographic and pictorial draughtsman” was in Britain. Sadly I can’t find any trace of Jacob’s artworks but we do have  his “few remarks on English gardeners and gardening…”

 

From his lodgings on the Balls Pond Road, Jacob’s first trip was to the famous Loddiges nursery just down the road  in Hackney “and never shall I forget the sensation produced in me by this establishment. I cannot describe the raptures I experienced on seeing that immense palm house. All that I had before seen of the kind appeared nothing to me compared with this. I fancied myself in the Brazils; and especially at that moment when Mr. Loddiges had the kindness to produce, in my presence, a shower of artificial rain.” He was also very taken by “the vast ranges of green-houses and hothouses; particularly at the beautiful curvilinear camellia house, in which the plants produced the most beautiful effect” and would remember it when he planned his own back in Frankfurt

Next was nearby Clapton Nursery which had recently been established  by Scots horticulturalist John Bain Mackay. “Here I was struck with the neat construction of the houses, the beautiful and rich collection of Cape and New Holland [Australia] plants, and their excellent management” That’s not surprising because Mackay and his foreman Hugh Low propagated plant material sent to them  by William Baxter from Australia.  Their skill was  noticed by Jacob who was ” particularly pleased with the propagating house, and I am fully convinced that cuttings will strike no where else better than under such management. ”

Rinz was clearly impressed by these new introductions because he and  his father were later to introduce so many exotics from Australia that their name was given in 1843 to a group of Australian plants in the myrtle family.

It must have been a busy few days for Jacob because  he also visited the nurseries of  Messrs Gray, Malcolm, Lee, Colvill, Knight, Whitley, and Milne, saying he “was every day more astonished at them.”.

He picked out “the fine collection of Cape and other plants by Messrs. Rollison”   and Mr. Knight’s camellias” and “the forcing of flowers at  Colville’s is very rich“, although  “I think we force flowers on a much larger scale in Germany than you do in England.”

Later he visited a couple more nurseries in Surrey including that of Robert Donald at Goldsworth in Woking. It had been established on a small scale as early as 1760 but Donald was in the process of expanding and already had “a very large and pretty well kept collection of fruit and forest trees, and also of American plants. The trees are in excellent health, and the immense quantities of some kinds of forest trees cultivated here is surprising.”  By 1860 it had grown to over 200 acres before being taken over by the Walter Jackman who had trained at nearby at Messrs Waterer’s at Knaphill. Jacob went there too and it had “the largest and finest collection of American plants I ever saw. Much as I was delighted with Messrs. Loddiges’ palm-house, I was equally so here in the midst of the finest rhododendrons and azaleas, which grow in abundance from self-sown seeds.” For more on both these nurseries see Ian Wakeford’s article on the Woking History website.

 

His view of commercial nurseries was positive although he  also ” much felt the want of a splendid flower-market in London, where one might admire every day a beautiful exhibition; and it would certainly encourage the trade, delight amateurs, and contribute to the interest and ornament of the metropolis.” Although Covent Garden already sold plants and flowers it would take opening of the new market building in 1830 to create the “splendid flower market” Jacob described.

He concluded that ‘there are no where else in the world so many large and well kept collections assembled together. To be able merely for once to look at those places would be a sufficient inducement to the Continental gardener to visit England.”

 

However Jacob was quite capable of being quite critical. The 30 acres of the Horticultural Society gardens at Chiswick had only been open for seven years when he visited  and “seem to be pretty well kept…  but, in my humble opinion, the flower and American plant departments might have been much better laid out than they are.” On a second visit he was able to admire one of the first  wisterias to  flower in Britain. [Wisteria had only arrived in 1816, and there were still very few in cultivation For more on these early introductions see this earlier post]

He went to the royal gardens at Kew which had fallen into decline in the years following the death of Sir Joseph Banks in 1820, a state that was to last until it was converted into the equivalent of our national botanic garden in 1840.   He had been told “these gardens contained the largest collection of any; but I would give the preference to those of Messrs. Loddiges and Mr. Lee, and every practical gardener will be of the same opinion.”

Of course it was not all bad because there were “many beautiful and new plants there; amongst others, the Araucaria imbricata in the open air attracted my attention. What a picturesque and majestic tree it must be in its native country!”  This must have been  one of the five specimens that had been given to Joseph Banks by Archibald Menzies on his return from Chile in 1796, most of which died. [For more on this see an earlier post on the introduction of monkey puzzle trees].  But the rest of the gardens were generally deficient:  “With respect to the pleasure-ground, I have no high opinion of it. The trees are in a miserable state, and badly distributed. I met with a little piece of water, which I think would have been better omitted.

Moving further away from London into the Home Counties Jacob  visited a series of private estates beginning with Claremont,  home of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the future King of the Belgians. Leopold had married Princess Charlotte, the daughter and heir of the Prince Regent, later George IV,  and they had been given the Claremont estate in Surrey as a wedding present in 1816 by the British government.  Sadly Charlotte died in childbirth the following year but Leopold continued to enjoy considerable status in Britain and was the future Queen Victoria’s favourite uncle.   The gardens were under the supervision of Charles M’Intosh and Jacob  “was very much delighted with all the arrangements. The culinary garden, and the forcing and other houses, were in such a good state as to equal any thing I ever saw. The pine-plants and hot-house plants looked pretty well, and the whole shows the superior taste of Mr. M’Intosh.”

Next came  Walton, the seat of the earl of  Tankerville whose wife Emma was a great plant collector, botanist  and gardener . She was a friend of Joseph Banks and her head gardener Mr Richardson was a friend of John Claudius Loudon who said the collection was “reckoned one of the best, if not the very best, in the neighbourhood of London.  Lady Tankerville employed botanical artists to record the garden and there are  over 680 drawings now kept at Kew.  Many depict newly introduced South African plants but there are also a large number of new introductions from China.  It was, said Jacob, “a remarkable place” although the greenhouses were old – probably dating from the early years of her marriage nearly 60 years earlier  “the whole is pretty well kept.”

Loudon himself had written a very detailed account the year before of the next garden Jacob visited.  This was  Bagshot Park,  home to Prince William Frederick,  the nephew  of King George III. Jacob “was much pleased.  In particular I was struck with the extraordinary neatness and cleanliness in which it is kept. ‘The American plants are in a beautiful state, and many rhododendrons are very well distributed in the masses of large trees. ‘The pleasure-ground is embellished with some well executed seats; and the whole laying out would show a perfect good taste, had the flower masses been united with the shrubbery.  Mr. Toward is an enthusiastic gardener and naturalist, and has a fine herbarium,” which Loudon said contained 3000 specimens.

Next was a visit to Hampshire to see  The Grange, at Northington, from 1817 the seat of the banker Alexander Baring who had then commissioned a splendid state of the art conservatory.   His gardener was  Peter M’Arthur, a Fellow of the Horticultural Society, and a contributor to Loudon’s Gardener’s magazine who, in 1826, had written an article about it. Loudon followed this up the following year with  a description of the 100 x 50 ft iron and glass structure by the manufacturers Jones and Clark of Birmingham.

So it’s perhaps not surprising that   Jacob “was curious to see the famous conservatory” which  “completely fulfilled my expectations. I do not think that any conservatory is executed with more splendour, and it is a striking proof of the great wealth of the English…  although the house is of a considerable height, the plants had filled the whole space so thickly that Mr. M‘Arthur was obliged to cut them down, and to remove some New Holland [Australian] plants, several of which had stems of from 4 to 5 in. in diameter.” But even so there was room for improvement: “new ones  are wanting, such as correas, hoveas, azaleas, &c., which will never grow too high, and will afford a finer show.

Another royal residence, Frogmore,  had “some well kept forcing-houses and greenhouses, but the pleasure-ground is planted too thickly.” It had become a royal residence in 1792 when it was bought by George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte. She had a great interest in botany and introduced over 4,000 trees and shrubs to create a picturesque landscape. Her daughter Princess Augusta Sophia was the occupant at the time of Jacob’s visit.

Frogmore’s over-planting  or overgrowth might have been a sign of neglect but at Whiteknights on the outskirts of Reading he was almost shocked. “What a pity it is that this place is neglected! How it must grieve a gardener to look at the ruins of so much splendour! Many green-houses, hot-houses, and aquariums, &c., are standing empty ; and some remaining plants show the rich collection which has been here in former times.”

The estate had been bought in 1798 by George Spencer-Churchill, the Marquis of Blandford, who spent lavishly building hothouses.  He also made extensive changes to the estate, landscaping the parkland, designing botanic gardens, re-shaping the lake, creating paths and planting trees. He even commissioned a beautifully illustrated descriptive guide  but in 1819 the year it was published,  Spencer-Churchill, by now Duke of Marlborough went bankrupt and abandoned Whiteknights for Blenheim, and didn’t even pay for the book.

Last but by no means least “of all the parks which I saw in England that of Dropmore pleased me the most.”  The seat of the politician and former prime minister Lord Grenville  it was according to Loudon,  who visited in 1827, “one of the sites that Nature itself might envy”. The head gardener William Baillie became one of his contributors and wrote a description of the gardens for the Gardener’s Magazine published in 1828. Jacob thought “some very good ideas are displayed in its laying out, which are also very well executed. The flower-garden is not, as I like it, united with the shrubbery ; but still it is laid out with good taste, and wherever one might think it necessary to divide the flower-garden from the shrubbery, it should be done in that style.

Grenville was a prominent member of the Horticultural Society and a great tree collector, being in the forefront of the pinetum movement, and growing one of the earliest monkey puzzles.   ‘There is a pretty large collection of pines, and some araucarias are standing in the open air with protection.” ‘The houses looked beautiful, and were embellished with a great many forced flowers. ‘The orangery is large and well kept, and will be still further enlarged this season. Should this place remain for a time under the present style of management, it will soon become one of the most interesting gardens in Britain.” As indeed it did.

Then after a quick trip to Liverpool it was time to leave :”I am sorry to be obliged to leave England at present without visiting Scotland ; but I have to make a long tour in different parts of the Continent before I return to Frankfort” with lots of memories and ideas.

 

Jacob completed his training in 1831 and a  few weeks later he went into partnership  with his father, and later his younger brother.  He became the driving force behind the  nursery, interested in international innovations and  famous for  his plant breeding programmes, notably with camellias, orchids, rhododendrons and azaleas.

His later catalogue  shows his enormous range of plants including over 300 camellia varieties , with one of his hybrids  Camellia japonica Francofurtensis  still commercially available.

 

In 1854 he replaced his father’s old greenhouses with new iron framed ones joining  them to a new  Temple of Flora or winter garden, which he wanted to use as an exhibition and show space.   Unfortunately, because of local rivalry it wasn’t a great success and  it was demolished in 1863, just a couple of years after his death in 1860. His nursery hardly outlasted him, as his both his father and brother  died within a few months, and his nephew who took over died in 1863.

I wonder if any of his English friends took up his invitation to visit Frankfurt so he could “return the kindnesses I have experienced while in England”

The full article can be found here