The Garden History Blog

Camellia Francofurtensis                                          a hybrid created by Jacob Rinz

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…

Rinzia orientalis, named after Rinz and his father 

Continue reading →

A crowned Saracen’s head, the crest of the Barons Willoughby de Eresby

I was listening to Radio 3’s Composer of the Week recently where the subject was Thomas Linley,  an English contemporary of Mozart I’d never heard of.  The music was impressive but  then I caught mention of a visit that Linley  paid to Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire in 1779 which ended in tragedy.  [More on that below]

It set me thinking about my own visits there and spurred me to write this post which I’ve been promising to do ever  since I included an amusing account of a visit to the ducal owner of Grimsthorpe in a much earlier post…

[as usual the photos are mine unless otherwise acknowledged]

The North front of Grimsthorpe Castle, designed by Sir John Vanbrugh

Continue reading →

Image courtesy of the State Archives of Florida

Adam-ondi-Ahman
Dale Thompson Fletcher, 1968 Image via Sproingield Museum of Art
https://webkiosk.springville.org/objects-1/info/10774?sort=0

Continuing the silly season…

The Garden of Eden has moved … again!  Last week it was in China, Somaliland, Sri Lanka or the Seychelles but I’ll let you into a secret  it was actually at the North Pole.

Sorry, that’s wrong  too because as you can see Eden  was being advertised in Florida. However its claim to be the original would be disputed because  there were other “genuine” sites for the garden  in  Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky, California and Kansas amongst others.

From Florida state archives 

I’m sure you think I’m joking again  but honestly I’m not. As I said last week plenty of people have “proved”  that Eden was elsewhere, even in parts of the world that were unknown  to the authors of the Book of Genesis.

Read on for more about the Garden[s] of Eden in the Americas and the “interesting” people who found them…

from The Evening News, 20th October 1890

Continue reading →

Heywood Seton-Karr

The August silly season continues…

“My first approach to the Garden of Eden was from the west while tracking a lion”  so opens an account by a respected British explorer and archaeologist when he found Eden in Somaliland in the 1890s.  Not far away he found the stone tools made and used by Adam. Some of them can still be seen in museums all round Britain.

Of course he was mistaken because the Garden of Eden was in China wasn’t it?  Sorry, my mistake  it was actually in Venezuela – but no I really meant the Seychelles or was it Kashmir?

I’m sure you think I’m joking because obviously [if it existed at all] Eden was in the Middle East  [after all that’s where the Bible was written] but honestly I’m not. Plenty of people have “proved”  that it was elsewhere, even in parts of the world that were unknown  to the authors of the Book of Genesis.

Read on to find out more about the Garden of Eden and where it actually is/was/might have been, and some of the “interesting” people who thought they’d found it.

Continue reading →