Did you know there were cacti and bananas growing in London at the end of the 17thc? Or that there were vineyards and commercial winemaking? Or that the king rarely paid his bills? Following on from last week’s post about the grander gardens of London that were visited by Sir John Gibson in 1691, today I’m going to look at the commercial nurseries he visited – and a couple that he didn’t.
Although a few probate inventories detail the contents of a small number of nursery grounds, there are no plans, no accounts and very few letters or other documentary sources about them. Gibson’s descriptions provides some very useful information to form a fuller picture of what they were like, and even suggest that some were quite like modern garden centres, with lots of attractions other than plants.
I don’t often write more than one post on a garden. But then few gardens are quite as extraordinary as Babylonstoren. 
Back in September I was in South Africa and taken to see Babylonstoren, an impressive “new” garden about an hour north of Cape Town.
The Garden History Blog 
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