From specimens to commodities: the London nursery trade and the introduction of exotic plants in the early nineteenth century^*

Abstract

Nursery owners played a critical role in transforming imported plants and trees from scientific specimens into commodities that became widespread in British gardens in the first half of the nineteenth century. This article uses rare surviving business records of London nurserymen to investigate the scale and structure of the nursery trade and its business practices between 1800 and 1850 and how nursery businesses innovated to meet the needs of an emerging middle class.

Writing to his son James in America in 1821, the journalist and politician William Cobbett held out the prospect of a new business venture that would provide his son with a good living. A nursery business selling trees and shrubs grown from seeds gathered in America would do very well, Cobbett thought, and ‘it gives me great pleasure to introduce and spread things of this sort’.¹ James Cobbett and George Woodcock of New York were charged with gathering vast quantities of American tree seed to be shipped to England, and for several years Cobbett sent Woodcock detailed lists of the seeds he required, the best locations to gather the seed and the right times to visit these locations.² The black locust tree (Robinia pseudoacacia) with its beautiful wisteria-like white blossoms, the tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) with its orange flowers and buttery autumn colour, the black walnut (Juglans nigra) and Magnolia glauca, ‘the finest shrub in the world … above all things let me have a lot of these’, were among the trees propagated from imported seed at Cobbett’s nursery in Kensington and gradually spread through the British Isles.³ They still adorn London streets and British gardens today but their exotic origins are rarely discerned by those who enjoy their colour and variety. American trees formed the first wave of the exotic plants from Britain’s colonies (and former colonies) that were to transform Britain’s landscapes and gardens in the nineteenth century. Within a few years of its establishment William and James Cobbett’s seed farm and nursery at Kensington was a thriving business, assisted perhaps by the connections that Cobbett would have established when he was employed as a gardener in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in his youth.⁴

Cobbett’s decision to specialize in American trees and shrubs, exploiting his American connections, proved to be a shrewd business decision.⁵ Writing in 1835, the impresario of horticultural publishing John Claudius Loudon observed that the nursery business had undergone a substantial transformation in the two preceding decades. Whereas nurseries in the vicinity of London and Edinburgh had dominated the supply of trees twenty years previously, by 1835 ‘all the forest trees, and the more common of the fruit trees, are procured by planters from nurseries in their immediate neighbourhood; and the demand on the metropolitan nurseries is limited to the less common articles, or to what is new’.⁶ He went on to identify the chief vulnerabilities of the trade: the high rents charged for nursery ground in the vicinity of London and ‘the very long credit generally taken by country gentlemen’. These factors, rather than high running costs, explained the high prices that nurseries were forced to charge for plants not commonly held by provincial nurseries.⁷ Specialization was advantageous if a business could accumulate the expertise and connections to acquire and cultivate exotic imports (plants from outside Europe not already naturalized in the British Isles), and enabled nurseries to charge high prices for rarities. The structure of businesses themselves also dictated the direction of development and the abrupt disappearance of traders.

This article examines how plants from Britain’s expanding empire re-made the British garden during this period, looking at the relationship between nursery businesses, botanical gardens and the domestic garden. Plant introductions resulted from British engagement with non-native flora, whether as traders, colonizers, botanical explorers or plant collectors.⁸ Nurseries participated in, and profited from, these processes of plant introduction, as well as supporting the development of botanical science through the provision of plants for illustration and dialogue with botanists over nomenclature and classification.⁹ Furthermore, as Sarah Easterby-Smith has demonstrated in the case of two businesses in London and Paris, nursery owners acted as important intermediaries between scientific networks and wider publics in the late eighteenth century. Nurseries were also important partners of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in plant collecting overseas, sponsoring expeditions and sharing their discoveries. But little is known about the day-to-day operations of the trade, its scale or the factors that led to the emergence of businesses that specialized in exotic plants or trees. Was there a specialist trade in exotic plants by the early nineteenth century that promoted their introduction and how was that trade structured? This article examines the organization of the plant nursery trade – as distinct from the growth of fruit and vegetables in market gardening – during the early decades of the nineteenth century, the scale of business activity, and the increasing pressures on nursery businesses to specialize. In particular, it evaluates Loudon’s claims regarding the effects of debt and specialization on nursery businesses using the only London nursery business records to have survived from the early nineteenth century: Colvill’s Exotic Nursery, Samuel Harrison’s Nursery, and James Cochran, a hybrid nursery and gardening business. (No business records exist for William Cobbett’s nursery and seed business.) The article analyses the management of debt by businesses in some detail, approaching the issue as a question of business practice rather than individual character, to provide insight into the way in which debt management operated in early nineteenth-century small businesses prior to the widespread utilization of bank lending and instruments of credit.¹⁰ It concludes by examining how ways of doing business evolved up to 1840 as owners took advantage of new opportunities to expand their clientele and the ways in which nursery owners encouraged new forms of consumption among the aristocratic elite and the urban middle class.

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The role of the nursery trade in the creation of British gardens and landscapes has tended to be subordinated to writing the history of garden design and plant discovery.¹¹ Yet, as Kathleen Clark has demonstrated in respect of the early eighteenth century, without the nursery trade, the large-scale planting of the eighteenth-century landscape garden would not have been possible.¹² Nor would nineteenth-century gardens have acquired exotic plants so quickly, in such variety. Nurseries provided the means through which botanical specimens were transformed into commodities, and hence cultivated at the scale required to achieve transformations in the urban and rural landscape. Large nursery businesses already existed by the middle of the eighteenth century in London and the provinces and some carried large stocks of North American trees and shrubs. Specialization by nurseries was already apparent by the late seventeenth century and the use of catalogues to market plants was apparent by the mid eighteenth century.¹³ This specialization intensified by the end of the century but, as this article will demonstrate, the early nineteenth century trade delivered innovations in discovery, scale, marketing and distribution techniques. These are discussed in the second part of the article.¹⁴

In 1786 John Abercrombie published a list of fifty-eight nurseries within eight or ten miles of London, while Thomas Milne’s maps of Middlesex drawn between 1795 and 1799 show forty-five nursery businesses.¹⁵ By 1841 the Post Office London Directory listed at least 122 nursery businesses.¹⁶ Judging by the names listed, this trade appears to have been male-dominated but more work is needed to understand the role of women as family members, proprietors and workers in these businesses.¹⁷ Nurseries were particularly concentrated in the fertile flood plain to the west of London, on the Kings Road, in Hammersmith and in Fulham. The concentration of nurseries in this district was partly a function of their proximity to highways leading to the suburbs of west London and the Thames Valley, which had become fashionable locations during the eighteenth century.¹⁸ The concentration of fruit growing for the London market on the roads north of the Thames between Kensington and Twickenham may also have encouraged nursery businesses to congregate in this area.¹⁹ (Market gardens were concentrated almost exclusively on the north side of the Thames from Fulham to Teddington, with the largest concentrations in Chiswick and Isleworth.) In 1818 there were ten nurseries or florists in the 275-yard stretch of road then known as King’s Road, including Colvill’s Exotic Nursery near Sloane Square, and Joseph Knight’s Royal Exotic Nursery (later Knight & Perry) on the King’s Road opposite what is now Lots Road.²⁰ Another arc of nursery grounds could be found on the eastern fringes of the City of London, extending from Mile End through Hackney and the Kingsland Road to Clapton and the Lea Valley (which became a site of market gardening that persisted well into the twentieth century).²¹ Thomson’s and Gordon’s Nursery in Mile End, Loddiges Nursery in Hackney and Messrs. Low in Clapton were the most prominent dealers in exotic plants to the east of London.²² In his 1798 survey of agriculture in Middlesex, John Middleton estimated that around 1,500 acres in the county were devoted to nursery grounds, producing around £100,000 a year in revenue.²³ Converting this sum to present-day value using the labour earnings index, nursery grounds generated around £123 million a year in today’s money.²⁴ Subsequent conversions using labour value for commodities and labour earnings for revenue appear in brackets after the original sum.

In his 1839 guide to London nurseries James Mangles identified fourteen businesses in London and eight businesses in the south or west of England that specialized in varieties of exotic plants and were ‘celebrated for particular classes of plants’.²⁵ Only two of the nurseries he recommended in London did not specialize in exotics, but outside London his list of 130 nursery and seed businesses includes only eight businesses where specific mention is made of exotic stock, and this list does not include Backhouse of York, Dickson of Edinburgh or Messrs. Veitch of Exeter, all known to be dealing in exotic plants by this time.²⁶ Analysing nursery catalogues up to 1837, John Harvey found that exotic plants tended to disseminate slowly from the capital to provincial nurseries, and that the London nurseries and seed companies appeared to predominate in the trade.²⁷ Loudon partly attributed the growing difficulties facing the nursery business in the 1830s to the wider dissemination of propagation techniques, which led to greater competition for specialists.²⁸ Caution should therefore be exercised when inferring from trade catalogues of the period that plants were less available outside London, or that there was little demand for plants which disappear from catalogues: Loudon noted that for many nurserymen, new plants remained profitable only for three or four years after coming into their possession, due to the speed with which competitors could propagate their own stock.²⁹

What scale of enterprise was the largest nursery business? The chief means of assessing the size of businesses in the absence of annual accounts or probate inventories is to look at the insured value of fixed capital using fire insurance records.³⁰ In the period between 1780 and 1860 fire insurance of business premises was dominated by Sun Fire Assurance and Phoenix.³¹ This discussion concentrates on London nurseries insured by Sun Fire between 1780 and 1848.³² Loddiges Nursery, the most prominent nursery business of its day, was insured in 1803 and 1808, and by that time, even before the construction of its largest glass houses, it ranked as one of the largest risks insured by Sun Fire. Of the remaining 200 policies also issued in 1803 only three were for larger sums – a wine merchant at Wapping, a malt distiller at Pimlico and a chemist and druggist at Cheapside.³³ Contemporaries judged Loddiges to be the one of largest nursery businesses of its day, especially with respect to its fixed capital of glasshouses. In 1803 the business insured its glasshouses, hot houses and stove for £1,000 [£1.06 million], and the stock and utensils contained therein for the same sum.

The other larger nurseries, Archibald Thomson of Mile End and Thomas Barr of Balls Pond Road, Islington, also had substantial sums assured for rebuilding of glasshouses – £500 [£533,500] in the case of the camellia specialist Thomson and £200 [£213,400] in the case of Barr. Some insurance policies contain a breakdown of the differing premiums paid for each item insured within the policy, and it is evident from a comparison of the premiums paid on dwellings, buildings and glasshouses that nursery owners were required to pay very high premiums to insure their glasshouses, due in part to the high excise duty on glass.³⁴ A crude comparison of the premiums paid for buildings cover and for glasshouse cover suggests that the cost of the latter was approximately twenty times higher per pound of coverage compared to buildings cover.

Most nursery businesses in and around London were modest enterprises, with fixed capital values akin to those of small to medium farms. Agricultural buildings provide the closest comparison to nursery buildings for which capital values have been studied intensively. A small farmer’s dwelling house might have an insured value of £250 [£266,700], or £1,000 [£1.06 million] for a large farm house in 1800, while the mean insured value of agricultural stock and utensils was £538 [£638,300].³⁵ The mean value of commercial property insured in London was £298 [£353,000], and the mean value of insured personal possessions in London was £245 [£290,700] in the period 1800–50.³⁶ In comparison, nursery owners in London insured their dwellings and premises for sums between £200 and £620 during the period 1780–1848, except for the Loddiges family.³⁷ The house of Conrad Loddiges was insured for £1,400 [£1.28 million] in 1808, on a par with many substantial London residences of the period. By 1836, George Loddiges was insuring another house at Paradise Row, just off Mare Street for £700 [£592,900], but also insuring household goods, china and glass, prints and pictures, musical instruments, and curiosities including his collection of stuffed birds, for £1,900 [£1.6 million]. This accumulation of goods reflects a prosperous middle-class lifestyle as well as the disposable income to pursue a variety of cultural and scientific interests and to amass valuable collections. Joseph Knight, George Loddiges’s main competitor during this period, was sufficiently wealthy to buy a two-and-a-half-acre plot in Cadogan Street, Chelsea, in 1840, and donate it to a Catholic parish, and to build Bitham Hall, at Avon Dassett in Warwickshire, as his retirement home in 1853.³⁸

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It would be a mistake to infer from the preceding account that the nursery trade was structured in a hierarchical fashion, with a few large nurseries at the top of the chain and many smaller ones serving only their own neighbourhoods. An examination of the accounts of the fashionable Mayfair gardener and florist James Cochran for the period between 1813 and 1817 suggests that the market was instead differentiated, with a high degree of trade between businesses, which permitted a multiplicity of traders to cater to specific markets differentiated by locality and class. Cochran’s business at 7 Duke Street, for example, catered to a geographically distinct clientele, the wealthy aristocratic and middle-class residents of the Mayfair streets around Grosvenor Square,³⁹ selling cut flowers, flower displays, contract gardening services and seeds.⁴⁰ His customers could rent flowers by the night or the week for displays during parties, usually massed in tiers to obscure the walls of the room or displayed in a conservatory built at upper ground floor level onto the back of a townhouse. Customers could also engage Cochran’s men to come and plant up and maintain a flower border at their town house during the London season.⁴¹ Cochran also supplied their needs when residing in the country, supplying large orders of vegetable seeds for their country estates.⁴² Cochran himself made purchases from seedsmen such as Samuel Harrison, with whom he did substantial business.⁴³ He also sold seeds to a number of nurserymen who were regular customers, suggesting that the division between seedsmen, nurserymen and gardeners was far from clear cut in this period.⁴⁴ Cochran’s accounts reveal an enormous breadth of suppliers – 267 in the period 1813 to 1815 – including modest trade with the most prominent exotic nurseries of the day, a substantial trade in bulbs with Dutch nurseries and regular supply of small trees and shrubs by Waterer & Co of Knap Hill, Surrey, a specialist in American plants.⁴⁵ Cochran’s stock was not restricted to plants and seeds. He also sold several types of flower vase supplied by Josiah Wedgwood and held copies of William Aiton’s Hortus Kewensis on a sale or return basis.⁴⁶ Cochran bought in large quantities of stock from nurserymen throughout the summer that were sold on to customers at a premium of up to 100 per cent.

Nursery businesses also acquired stock from nursery owners abroad. Loudon observed in 1835 that ‘A number of new azaleas, and other American shrubs and trees, and new varieties of fruit trees, have been imported from Belgium; many new roses and orange trees from France; and many flowers, such as Dutch anemones, &c., from Holland’.⁴⁷ Samuel Harrison was a regular purchaser of bulbs from nurseries in Holland, while Joseph Knight purchased stock from 1814 on annual continental tours, a practice recommended to other nurserymen by the ever-improving Loudon.⁴⁸

The high degree of interconnection observed in Cochran’s accounts is also evident in the accounts of Samuel Harrison’s nursery and in those of Colvill’s Exotic Nursery. Samuel Harrison, who took over a nursery business from his uncle Henry Hewitt upon his death in 1790, concluded a partnership agreement with William Bristow in 1819, by which time the business stock was valued at £10,000 [£8.4 million]. (Harrison’s Nursery was located on the site subsequently occupied by Kensington Olympia, on the north side of the road to Hammersmith.) Samuel Harrison’s accounts show regular and sizeable trade with at least ten large London nurseries in the period 1809–11, including Lee and Kennedy, Colvill’s Exotic Nursery, Daniel Fitch, William Malcolm, William Rollisson and Gibbs & Co, as well as substantial transactions with James Cochran,⁴⁹ and as noted previously, there was also a high degree of financial interdependence, notably between the seed merchants and nursery businesses.

In 1819 Harrison’s own debts had already led one of his largest creditors, the partnership of John George and Jacob Wrench, seedsmen of Thames Street in the City of London, to require the assignment to the partners of a life assurance policy on Samuel Harrison’s life for the sum of £1,000 [£844,000], as a security against his debts with the business.⁵⁰ Eventually Samuel Harrison and William Bristow were declared bankrupt in November 1832, and the assignees appointed by the creditors to oversee the winding up of the business were William Nash of The Strand, a seedsman, and John Willmott of Lewisham, a nurseryman.⁵¹ The nature of their businesses suggest that Nash and Willmott would have been leading creditors; by this time, William Nash was one of the principal dealers in seeds in London.

Harrison’s accounts reveal a range of business practices that may have contributed to his bankruptcy, especially the large amount of debt carried by the business on a seasonal basis. Harrison’s nursery dealt predominantly in seeds, grown either on the nursery’s own land or by farmers outside London who would ship seed to the nursery after harvesting. It also dealt in fruit trees. A substantial proportion of the firm’s business was conducted with customers outside London, requiring the senior partner Samuel Harrison to spend three to four months each summer touring the country to collect debts and to solicit new orders from existing customers. These journeys were substantial financial undertakings in their own right, illustrating the scale of Harrison’s enterprise at the time. His northern journey in 1807 lasted from 2 July until 27 October, with a budget of twenty-seven shillings [£1,276] per day for board, lodging and entertainment of customers, hire of a gig for eighteen weeks at one guinea a week [£992] and £54 5s 8d [£51,320] in gratuities, for receipts of £6,195 11s 3d [£5.85 million]. Gratuities, in the form of a 10 per cent commission paid to the head gardener, were a necessary business expense to achieve orders and must have provided a substantial supplement to the wages of a head gardener. The receipt of such gratuities may explain why head gardeners such as George Sinclair at Woburn Abbey were later able to buy into established nursery businesses.

Harrison also paid large bills to seed suppliers on these journeys.⁵² The viability of business networks – and the consequent dissemination of goods – depended on an ability to collect debts in person if all else failed. Loudon’s observation that nursery businesses were burdened by ‘the very long credit generally taken by country gentlemen’ is certainly borne out in examination of Harrison’s accounts.⁵³ Harrison’s most difficult and disfavoured client, Mr. Tomlin of Banbury in Oxfordshire, persistently queried his bills and paid none for four years. Eventually Harrison wrote in exasperation, ‘we are at length satisfied that quibble, discontent, murmuring and procrastination are the basis on which all your commercial transactions are supported’.⁵⁴ But credit might also be extended in order to maintain the loyalty of socially prestigious customers. At the pinnacle of London society George Child Villiers, fifth earl of Jersey, was another persistent debtor of Harrison’s Nursery; by 1819 Villiers had paid no bill of Harrison’s for four years.⁵⁵ Villiers was also a customer of Colvill’s Exotic Nursery during the same period, but perhaps James Colvill was a more canny businessman, for the earl of Jersey does not feature among the list of clients who had been granted prolonged credit between 1810 and 1820.⁵⁶

The management of debt and the credit that was its corollary were critical features of nineteenth-century commerce. Whereas modern businesses can finance their inventory from bank lending but impose strict credit terms on their customers, nineteenth-century businesses operated on long credit cycles with minimal bank lending to underwrite trading. Although debt might be converted into bills of exchange to generate cashflow for a business, there is no evidence that either Colvill’s Nursery or Samuel Harrison were able to avail themselves of that facility.⁵⁷ The ability to manage one’s debtors and creditors successfully assured the longevity of one’s business, and in the nursery business management of debts appears to have been critical in determining which businesses became more prominent. In the luxury trades that catered to the aristocracy and the newly enriched, credit and debt acquired a geographical and calendrical character that mirrored the seasonal rhythm of the nursery business. One example is the need to carry out regional tours to collect debts and orders during the summer months.⁵⁸ E. J. Willson suggested that Samuel Harrison’s practice of touring customers to collect debts and solicit orders was becoming dated by the 1820s due to the emergence of the printed catalogue, and risked extending unmanageable credit to existing customers, leading to Harrison’s bankruptcy in 1833. Although the scale of debt carried by the business clearly grew in the 1820s, and likewise crippled many other nursery businesses, it is also the case, as previously observed, that the expansion of the provincial nursery trade challenged London businesses to specialize.⁵⁹ Competition from the provinces winnowed out those nurseries which did a bit of everything and tried to do so on a national scale. Furthermore, economic conditions were challenging for all businesses after the 1825 banking crisis, and by 1827 credit ceased to be extended to existing customers of Harrison’s Nursery if bills were left unpaid.⁶⁰ Specialization in some aspect of the exotic trade was a prudent path towards maintaining a viable business, if the skills and connections required to obtain, cultivate and market exotic plants could be maintained. This imperative perhaps explains why nursery businesses tended to persist in families, and die with family members too.

Colvill’s Exotic Nursery provides an example of a business that was prudent in the management of credit but curtailed by death. The business was founded by James Colvill (c.1746–1822) in 1783 and by 1795 was already well known for its selection of exotic plants. The nursery was located on the north side of the King’s Road on the site of what is now Anderson Street, opposite Duke of York Square. By 1811 the nursery was estimated to have between 30,000 and 40,000 square feet under glass. The nursery leased a second site at Roehampton from 1827 to 1834 but fell into decline and bankruptcy after the death of James Colvill the Younger in 1832.⁶¹ The nursery specialized in chrysanthemums, roses and pelargoniums, along with other hothouse and greenhouse plants. It was famed for its winter displays of bulbs, many of them hybrids raised by botanist Robert Sweet, who was foreman in charge of exotic plants between 1819 and 1826.⁶² While working at Colvill’s nursery Sweet began to publish his series of illustrated works on exotic plants.⁶³

Loudon praised Colvill’s Nursery for the brilliance of its displays of forced flowers and bulbs and its artful planting of Wisteria consequana in both a heated conservatory and an unheated greenhouse to maximize the season during which visitors could enjoy the blooms and pungent scent of this recent introduction.⁶⁴ Colvill displayed orchid specimens on a tree constructed from cocoa shells and moss so that ‘there is one species or another in flower every day of the year’ to reward visitors, indicating the extent to which this nursery must have sought to entice visitors to visit, return regularly and develop an interest in exotics, especially the more expensive exotics such as orchids.⁶⁵

Colvill’s Nursery is the only specialist in exotic plants with surviving records.⁶⁶ These cover the periods 1809–28 and 1832–4. Descriptions of what was purchased are not included for the earlier period, though the accounts provide details of customers and major creditors, and of business expenditure. They also show sums received from named customers in cash or on account, and sums disbursed to named traders, with a note of the goods or services purchased. The earlier set of accounts also includes a running total of credit extended, with details of the terms of credit and payments on account.

The nursery’s accounts show that aristocratic collectors were regular customers and were extended substantial credit to satisfy their horticultural tastes. George Spencer-Churchill, marquess of Blandford, the heir of the duke of Marlborough and the owner of Whiteknights, one of the most celebrated gardens of the period, appears to have been Colvill’s most valuable customer after 1809 when the available details of sums on account begin. Colvill’s records show that select customers with large debts to the business had structured payment terms and that these were honoured almost without exception.⁶⁷ Credit of £200 [£181,000] for eight months was extended to the marquess of Blandford in September 1809, with a further £100 [£90,480] to be paid in twelve months’ time. Both debts were cleared. He received further credit of £142 2s 9d [£128,600] in March 1812 for a period of twelve months. This payment term was not honoured but in March 1815 credit of £500 [£399,400] was extended to the marquess for the period of twelve months.⁶⁸ Whether this sum consolidated the previous debt or represented completely new spending is unclear, although the marquess of Blandford was, by this stage in his career of notorious extravagance, approaching the point where he had to borrow £50,000 [£42 million] to keep his creditors at bay.⁶⁹ Lacking corresponding order records, it is not possible to say what purchases the credit covered.

This section has considered debt and the management of credit in some detail to address Loudon’s claim that bad debt – and certain types of debtor – undermined the nursery business in the early nineteenth century. A geographical and calendrical pattern of debt and credit rooted in the dominance of the landed aristocracy characterized early nineteenth century businesses catering to the middle class and the aristocracy. Whereas smaller shopkeepers were beginning to move to a cash-based commercial economy by this time,⁷⁰ the business cycle for many trades catering to the landed classes continued to operate to an agricultural and aristocratic calendar, imposing stresses on smaller businesses. Taken together, these factors indicate a well-established trade with a high degree of integration. Taking advantage of new opportunities to serve customers in the early nineteenth century allowed nurseries to move beyond their immediate locales and clientele to make exotic plants available to a wider range of customers and made businesses less reliant on a small number of wealthy customers. These innovations are reviewed in the next section.

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What Jon Stobart, Andrew Hann and Victoria Morgan have described as the ‘spatiality of consumption’ – the ways in which businesses and customers engaged with each other across space to create new opportunities for consumption – expanded greatly in the nursery trade in the early nineteenth century. The retailing of plants extended beyond the shop to engage customers in a range of spatial arrangements that reflected innovations in transport and communications in this period. In common with other areas of retailing, the nursery trade underwent considerable transformation in response to urbanization and the expansion of a middle class of means beyond London. The proliferation of specialized shops in the capital during the eighteenth century reflected the concentration of population and wealth necessary to support those businesses.⁷¹ But an examination of the nursery trade allows us to see that the spatial boundaries of urban consumption extended beyond the town and its inhabitants.⁷² Although by no means the only business area taking advantage of innovations in communications during the early part of the nineteenth century, the expansion of nursery businesses was aided by improvements that greatly increased their potential reach.⁷³ Mail coaches, the expansion of the canal system, cheaply printed catalogues, the expanding postal service and the railway transport of commercial goods were all employed in the marketing of nurserymen’s products, while a new urban shopping culture of display and personal service was embraced by the larger nursery owners as they competed for wealthy customers. An expanding middle class, the building of suburbs where houses with gardens were the norm and the increasing range of horticultural publications all stimulated demand for plants, trees and shrubs. Nursery businesses in the early nineteenth century usually combined a face-to-face and a mail order clientele. Business outside London was serviced by stagecoach in the main prior to the arrival of the railways and the penny post. The improvement of the road system and the expansion of stagecoach services made it practical for businesses to ship goods further and faster by 1800.⁷⁴ Goods would be dispatched to customers and seeds and other items would be sent by suppliers in the same way. To fulfil an order for pineapple plants, for example, Samuel Harrison requested the gardener at Mrs. Tudway’s house in Wells, Somerset, to send ten pine plants by stagecoach, indicating not only the use of specialist suppliers but also the way in which private gardens with specialist collections far from London might service the nursery trade.⁷⁵ Larger items would be sent by horse and cart to a location – often a coaching inn – that could be reached in half a day from London, at which the customer would be expected to attend with their own transport to complete the delivery. To deliver twenty fruiting pineapple plants to Lady Viscount Hampden at Glynde Place in Sussex, for example, Harrison asked for a covered wagon to meet his team at East Grinstead.⁷⁶ Goods might also be sent by water; John Harvey suggested that large quantities of young trees could be shipped by canal from London to the Midlands and Manchester, and although Harrison used canal shipping from London for some goods, there is also evidence that he used carriers who conveyed goods by ship to Gainsborough, the furthest navigable point on the River Trent, before sending them on by canal to Loughborough. Vessels travelling to Gainsborough advertised onward shipment by canal to destinations throughout the Midlands as far as Wolverhampton, Liverpool and Manchester, and to Yorkshire too.⁷⁷ At least one nursery adapted its techniques of culture specifically to cater to the mail order trade in this period; Dennis & Co, a specialist in pelargoniums, propagated its cuttings in very small clay pots called ‘thumbs’, ‘for the convenience of sending to a distance in little bulk’, and maintained stock of 15,000–20,000 plants in the summer months.⁷⁸

Harrison’s business correspondence does not discuss postal charges or the use of postal services to distribute seeds, but within months of the inauguration of the Uniform Penny Post in 1840, Loudon was enthusiastically promoting it as a boon to horticulture. Prior to its introduction, merchants such as Harrison might send notices of new stock with bills to existing customers, but tradesmen’s circulars were a source of nuisance to many because the recipient was required to pay for the item according to the distance it had travelled. Praising the possibilities of the new postal system, Loudon observed:

Collectors of plants receiving such catalogues, when they see a kind mentioned in them of which they are doubtful, may write for a specimen, or for a scion, or for seeds. Another great advantage of the system is, that by means of the adhesive stamp the sender of a letter may not only pay it, but enclose a stamp in order to pay the answer, and thus make sure of it.⁷⁹

The new postal system aided circulation of information and goods, and nurserymen quickly seized the opportunities presented for promotion and supply of their goods by post, contriving entirely new marketing methods and products. Within months of praising the new postal system, Loudon reported that from ‘Messrs. Sang of Kirkcaldy we received a prepaid packet very neatly done up, containing the seeds of 12 kinds of annuals, each with the name printed, and the price of the whole 12 only 1s [£43]’. He concluded: ‘If this does not lead to the general distribution of every useful and ornamental plant of which seeds are procurable, the fault will be in the public, not in government’.⁸⁰

Printed catalogues began to be issued more often by nursery businesses in the 1820s and 1830s as printing costs declined. Catalogues of businesses dealing in exotic plants used Latin plant names to indicate botanical accuracy but this did not always resolve two frequent criticisms levelled at the trade, the misclassification of plants grown from seed and the mistaken attribution of plants based on a lack of knowledge of botanical reference specimens and authorities. Loudon complained of catalogues in 1840: ‘We wish every nurseryman would get into the habit of putting authorities after his scientific names; and also of making certain that his names are correct, by comparing his plants (by specimens or otherwise) with those of some nursery or botanic garden where the names are acknowledged to be so’.⁸¹

Whereas catalogues of the early eighteenth century might contain illustrations,⁸² those of the early nineteenth century increasingly relied upon Latin terminology and the supportive illustrated botanical literature of the period such as Curtis’s Botanical Magazine to assist prospective purchasers in making their choices. Potential buyers were assumed to be sufficiently educated in taxonomy to be able to locate the types of plants they wanted. Loddiges catalogues, for example, became progressively more organized by taxonomy. Whereas an 1804 catalogue was organized into lists of hardy perennials, greenhouse plants and stove plants, by the 1840s the firm was issuing separate catalogues covering stove and greenhouse plants, orchids and palms, reflecting not only the growth in its stock but also the increasing specialism of some gardeners and collectors. Within these catalogues, lists were organized by genus, indicating the degree of specialist knowledge customers were expected to possess.⁸³ On the other hand, nurseries selling native trees and plants, especially annuals, continued to use English names in their catalogues, suggesting the distinction in education and knowledge drawn between patrons of the two types of business.⁸⁴

Unlike late nineteenth-century catalogues, which included price lists, nursery catalogues of the early nineteenth century almost always omitted prices.⁸⁵ John Harvey has argued that at the top end of the market, at least, to mention prices would have appeared ungentlemanly.⁸⁶ Prior to the introduction of the penny post, catalogues would have been mailed to existing customers or requested by prospective customers, and as Samuel Harrison’s letter book shows, these lists, whether handwritten or printed, often formed the basis for a correspondence through which the nursery owner established the customer’s needs and their capacity to pay. The availability of new catalogues was also advertised in the horticultural press. Loddiges Nursery issued regular catalogues from 1777 and began to issue catalogues for specialities such as palms and orchids from the 1830s.

Shopping in person remained the most important means by which customers viewed and acquired exotic plants. Nursery visits had become an accepted form of polite and improving recreation by the 1790s when William Curtis established his Botanic Garden in Sloane Street. By the 1820s, Loudon’s regular columns in The Gardener’s Magazine on nursery visits in London and beyond drew attention to seasonal and novel attractions. Nurseries offered a spectacular experience of flowering plants, exotics and controlled climates. They also attracted the passing visitor through external displays; on the King’s Road, Dennis & Co cultivated dahlias on an acre adjoining the road and a further piece of ground ‘fortunately adjoining the Fulham Road’.⁸⁷ Contemporary visitors have left no accounts of the practical aspects of their visits, as opposed to what they saw during their visit, but nurserymen were accustomed to receiving visitors and answering detailed botanical and horticultural questions.⁸⁸ Although gardeners might make selections on behalf of their employers, their employers appear to have visited the nursery and different family members were equally responsible for making purchases.⁸⁹ The accounts of James Colvill’s Exotic Nursery show that many purchases were made in person, by the gentry, by aristocrats, and almost as frequently by women as by men. At Colvill’s nursery women bought cut flowers and nosegays but were less likely to buy shrubs. Substantial orders that imply a new garden, or remodelling of an existing garden, were invariably ascribed to male customers. Trade followed the social as well as the gardening calendar: in 1812, for example, orders at Colvill’s Exotic Nursery were highest in May (£543 18s 6d) [£440,000] and lowest in September (£75) [£61,230] and December (£94) [£76,740], with flowers the biggest source of income during the winter months. Both Colvill’s and James Cochran’s accounts show a marked reduction in business activity from the end of the London season in late July until mid February and a lower frequency of purchases by titled customers during this period.⁹⁰ During the London season from February to July around one-third of Colvill’s customers were titled and included some of the most illustrious names in London’s social and political life.⁹¹ These included Sir David Dundas, commander-in-chief of the army at this time; Lord Liverpool (secretary of war and the colonies) and the Dowager Lady Liverpool; Lord Grosvenor, the developer of the Grosvenor estate; the duchess of Devonshire and numerous other aristocrats.

Colvill’s accounts show that the lifeblood of his business was cut flowers – his business was celebrated for forcing flowers and bulbs under glass, as previously mentioned – and the sale of nosegays, small sweet-scented bouquets. Despite proclaiming his business an ‘Exotic’ nursery, most of the named plants that Colvill sold were common European plants such as laurels and lavender. The most frequently sold exotic plants were American plants such as Yucca filamentosa, Yucca gloriosa, Escholzia californica (the California poppy), Kalmia latifolia (mountain laurel) and Kalmia angustifolia, and the recent Chinese introductions Magnolia conspicua (denudate), Magnolia purpurea (liliflora), China roses and, most popular of all, Aucuba japonica (Japanese or spotted laurel).⁹² The only hybrid varieties detectable from Colvill’s order books were Archibald Thomson’s Magnolia x. Thomsoniae and Magnolia x. Soulangeana.⁹³ Sales followed a seasonal rhythm that would be recognizable to any nursery or garden centre today: peonies, rhodedendrons and magnolia sold well in their spring flowering season, delphiniums in June, yuccas, roses and dahlias and geraniums in July and August, and shrubs for autumn planting in November.

*

The accounts of Samuel Harrison and Colvill’s Exotic Nursery provide some evidence regarding the value placed on specific plants and give some indication of how much exotic plants cost and whether they could be considered luxury goods. Colvill’s accounts show that items of the same size had a standard price which was the same for all customers. Where a lower price was charged for an item the cash book distinguishes that this was a smaller item. This implies that where nurseries did not publish their prices, they did so not because they expected to bargain with customers, but because they did not wish to run to the expense of reprinting catalogues if prices changed. Table 1 shows the comparative prices charged by four businesses – Colvill’s Exotic Nursery, Harrison’s Nursery, Messrs. Loddiges and Caldwell’s Nursery of Knutsford, Cheshire, as a regional comparator.

Table 1.

Comparative prices of common exotics.

	Colvill	Harrison	Caldwell	Loddiges
Yucca filamentosa	1s 6d [£66] (1834a)94	n/a	1s 6d [£65] (1832)95	n/a
Yucca gloriosa	5s [£221] (1834b)96	n/a	3s 6d [£151] (1832)	n/a
Magnolia conspicua	3s 6d [£155] (1834a&b)	n/a	7s 6d [£321] (1830)97	n/a
Magnolia purpurea	5s [£221] (1834a)	n/a	1s 6d–2s 6d [£65–£108] (1832)	n/a
Magnolia 3ft	n/a	7s 6d [£316] (1819)98	n/a	n/a
Camellia japonica	n/a	£1 1s [£857] (1812)99	n/a	n/a
Strelitzia regina	n/a	£4 4s [£3,429] (1812)	n/a	£5 10s 9d [£4,679] (1820)100
Escholzia californica	9d [£33] (1834a)	n/a	6d–1s [£21–£43] (1832)	n/a
Kalmia latifolia	3s 6d [£155] (1834b)	2s 6d [£102] (1812)	2s–7s 6d [£86–£325] (1832)	7s 6d [£316] (1820)
Kalmia angustifolia	3s 6d [£155] (1834b)	n/a	4s 6d [£328] (1791)101 1s–2s 6d [£43–£108] (1832)	2s 6d [£105] (1820)
Chrysanthemum (plants or stools)	9d [£33] (1834b)	6d [£20] (1812)	1s [£43] (1832)	n/a
Dahlia (plants or tubers)	6d [£22] (1834a)	7s 6d [£316] (1819)	2s–8s [£86–£347] (1832)	no price (1820)

Attempts to compare prices of another era with today’s costs using the Consumer Price Index fall foul of changes in the supply of underlying commodities and technologies that give rise to the price of goods and give little sense of the historical context of prices.¹⁰² In particular, the period between 1815 and 1835 saw a gradual deflation in all living costs apart from rent but little growth in real wages for manual work.¹⁰³ It is sounder to compare contemporary prices in the context of income and earnings. Considering wages, most of the people paid to raise these plants at Colvill’s Nursery were paid between 12s 6d and 14s a week in 1831 [£538–£603].¹⁰⁴ Industrial wages in Lancashire were higher; perhaps as high as 33s a week [£1,422] for men working in cotton mills.¹⁰⁵ A comfortable middle-class living required at least £250 [£215,000] a year in the 1830s and the costs of a middle-class lifestyle were correspondingly higher.¹⁰⁶ Wax candles, for example, cost around 3s 3d a dozen [£140] and coffee 3s 6d a pound in 1830 [£150],¹⁰⁷ while a copy of The Gardener’s Magazine cost 5s at its launch in 1826 [£216], and books such as Loudon’s Enyclopaedia of Gardening cost £2 10s [£2,289]. In comparison, Colvill’s Nursery charged 1s 6d for a Yucca filamentosa, 5s for a Yucca gloriosa, 5s for a Magnolia purpurea and 9d for chrysanthemum plants in 1834; and where other nursery businesses have prices available for these items, they were broadly similar in the 1830s (see Table 1 for price conversions).¹⁰⁸ A large nursery in Cheshire, Caldwell’s of Knutsford, charged similar prices to those of Colvill’s Nursery and Harrison’s Nursery for the same plants, suggesting that there was no London premium and nor were provincial nurseries charging higher prices due to lack of local competition.¹⁰⁹

The high prices of some items identified from nursery records, such as Strelitzia regina, the bird of paradise plant (£4 4s at Harrison’s Nursery in 1812 and £5 10s 9d at Loddiges in 1820),¹¹⁰ indicate the rarity and the cost of cultivation, whereas the comparative cheapness of dahlia tubers or plants indicates the relative ease of propagation and the greater supply of these items over time. Harrison’s Nursery charged 7s 6d for dahlia plants in 1819, by 1832 the cheapest plants offered by Caldwell’s Nursery had fallen in price to 2s, and there is some evidence that the prices of all items fell over time.¹¹¹ The lack of extensive price series for multiple nurseries in the early nineteenth century makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the relationship between dates of introductions and the trajectory of prices, or to discern whether the prices of plants followed changes in prices and incomes in the wider economy. Nevertheless, the prices charged for most of the plants sold by the nurseries discussed in this paper would not have been out of the reach of middle-class customers, particularly considering that most of the plants identified were perennial or greenhouse plants intended to form a major feature of a collection. However, as with cultural products such as books and plays, analysed by Robert D. Hume, the small size of the middle-class able to pay these sums and the frequency with which these expenditures could be borne needs to be taken into consideration.¹¹² Using the average earnings index to calculate present-day equivalent prices, it is clear that even the cheapest of these plants represented a more substantial investment for nineteenth-century consumers than they would for today’s gardener. The expansion of the market, demonstrated by the growth in nursery businesses, was a consequence of the growth of the middle class and increases in disposable income, as well as a greater interest in the creation of gardens in new suburbs. If plants became cheaper during the first half of the nineteenth century, the prices of most plants identified in this account nevertheless placed them firmly in the category of elite goods.

*

An extensive nursery trade differentiated by speciality, services, neighbourhood and clientele was well established in London by the early nineteenth century. Provincial nurseries were becoming more numerous and able to supply a wider range of needs, offering greater competition to the London nurseries and perhaps stimulating a drive towards specialization that coincided with the greater availability of exotics. For a few businesses with links to scientific circles, which had the wherewithal to engage collectors and with enough surplus to invest in greenhouses and heating, specialization provided the opportunity to build substantial and profitable businesses. The place of the nursery trade and commercial collectors in the history of botany remains underappreciated. This article provides a context for further investigations of the interactions between commerce and science in the first half of the nineteenth century, by examining the structure of the trade and its economy.

The fact that almost none of the businesses described in this article persisted more than one or two generations beyond the original founders suggests the extent to which they depended on the skills, drive and personality of the owner. Nevertheless, this article has shown that the trade was sufficiently diverse, interconnected and widely distributed to permit widespread commercial dissemination of the techniques necessary to raise exotic introductions. Nursery business records, despite their limited survival, demonstrate that nursery owners dealt directly with a broad array of the British aristocracy, albeit as tradesmen. Nursery businesses were among the trades which prospered in the period between 1780 and 1860 due to the demand for novelties, for luxury goods, and for consumption which demonstrated participation in polite society. The intermediary status of nursery owners made them peculiarly sensitive to the aspirations of the emerging middle class on the one hand, and the social expectations of the aristocracy and gentry on the other.

Footnotes

*

This article is an edited version of a paper first delivered to the Institute of Historical Research seminar on the History of Gardens and Landscapes. I would like to thank Felix Driver, Zoe Laidlaw, the convenors of the I.H.R. seminar and the anonymous reviewers for Historical Research for their help and advice. This research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/L503940/1]. All research data is referenced to the original archival sources or publications.

1

British Library, Additional MS. 31127, ‘William Cobbett, Letters to America 1825–1827’, fo. 19r, William Cobbett to James Cobbett, 7 Feb. 1821 (this series contains letters commencing in 1820).

2

Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 31127, ‘Cobbett’, fos. 25r, 37r, 50r, 57r. See also J. Grande, ‘William Cobbett’s correspondence, 1800–1835’ (unpublished University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 2011), pp. 100–4.

3

For Magnolia glauca, see Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 31127, ‘Cobbett’, fo. 59r, 11 July 1825. Cobbett was not the first to introduce these trees but was probably among the first to attempt to cultivate the trees from seed at scale.

4

G. D. H. Cole, The Life of William Cobbett (Abingdon, 2011), p. 19. Amidst his political activities and publishing of the Political Register, Cobbett found time to write an extremely practical and detailed guide, The English Gardener (London, 1829), to provide instructions on how to cultivate kitchen and ornamental gardens, as well as a guide to managing a smallholding, Cottage Economy (London, 1822), and Woodlands (London, 1825), a guide to trees and their management.

5

Cobbett’s nursery remained in business until 1831 when he decided to consolidate his farming and horticultural activities on a farm at Ash in Surrey, not for financial reasons but due to the pressures of his political career.

6

Gardener’s Magazine (G.M.), xi (1835), 621–2. The fall in the price of trees occurred from the 1780s onwards due to large-scale propagation by nurseries outside London to satisfy the national demand for tree planting and improvement of estates (see J. H. Harvey, ‘The supply of plants in the north-west’, Garden History, vi (1978), 33–7, at p. 36; S. Daniels, ‘The political iconography of woodland in later Georgian England’, in The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, ed. D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (Cambridge, 1988); P. Elliott, S. Daniels and C. Watkins, The British Arboretum: Trees, Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century (London, 2012), pp. 17, 158–62).

7

G.M., xi (1835), 621–2.

8

For further discussion of British engagement with non-native flora through colonizing, trade and exploration, see A. Bewell, ‘Erasmus Darwin’s cosmopolitan nature’, E.L.H. (English Literary History), vxxi (2009), 19–48; B. Fowkes Tobin, Colonizing Nature: the Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760–1820 (Philadelphia, Pa., 2005), esp. ch. 6; M. Ogborn, ‘Vegetable empire’, in Worlds of Natural History, ed. H. Curry and others (Cambridge, 2018); K. Murphy, ‘A slaving surgeon’s collection: the pursuit of natural history through the British slave trade to Spanish America’, in Curious Encounters: Voyaging, Collecting and Making Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. A. Cracuin and M. Terrall (Toronto, 2019), pp. 138–58; R. Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the ‘Improvement of the World’ (New Haven and London, 2000).

9

For recent examinations of the relationship between botanical science and commerce in the 18th century, see R. Coulton, ‘Curiosity, commerce and conversation: nursery-gardens and nurserymen in eighteenth-century London’, London Journal, xliii (2018), 17–35; R. Coulton, ‘Curiosity, commerce, and conversation in the writing of London horticulturists during the early-eighteenth century’ (unpublished Queen Mary, University of London Ph.D. thesis, 2015); S. Easterby-Smith, Cultivating Commerce: Cultures of Botany in Britain and France, 1760–1815 (Cambridge, 2017).

10

Margot Finn has previously analysed the ways in which practices of credit informed judgements and construction of character in the 19th century, see M. Finn, The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914 (Cambridge, 2003). Nancy Cox has examined the ways in which shop debt was managed in 17th- and 18th-century retailing, see N. Cox, The Complete Tradesman: a Study of Retailing, 1550–1820 (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 146–62.

11

For exceptions, see D. D. Chambers, The Planters of the English Landscape Garden (London, 1993); J. H. Harvey, Early Nurserymen (London, 1974); E. J. Willson, James Lee and the Vineyard Nursery Hammersmith (London, 1961); E. J. Willson, West London Nursery Gardens (London, 1982); D. Marsh, ‘The gardens and gardeners of later Stuart London’ (unpublished Birkbeck University of London Ph.D. thesis, 2005); M. Maddison, ‘The Callendars, eighteenth century northern nurserymen and seedsmen’, Garden History, xxxiii (2005), 210–44; J. Uings, B. Moth and M. Stevenson, Caldwell’s, Nurserymen of Knutsford for Two Centuries (Sale, 2016); J. Uings, ‘Gardens and gardening in a fast-changing urban environment: Manchester 1750–1850’ (unpublished Manchester Metropolitan University Ph.D. thesis, 2013); F. Davison, The Hidden Horticulturists: the Untold Story of the Men Who Shaped Britain’s Gardens (London, 2019), pp. 206–40; R. Floud, An Economic History of the English Garden (London, 2019), pp. 126–58.

12

K. Clark, ‘What the nurserymen did for us: the roles and influence of the nursery trade on the landscapes and gardens of the eighteenth century’, Garden History, xl (2012), 17–33.

13

M. Thick, ‘Market gardening in England and Wales’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales: v, ed. P. Quick (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 503–32, at p. 526; J. H. Harvey, Early Gardening Catalogues (London and Chichester, 1972), p. 14; Harvey, Early Nurserymen; Floud, Economic History, pp. 126–57.

14

For specialization in the 18th-century nursery trade, see Coulton, ‘Curiosity’, pp. 24–31; Easterby-Smith, Cultivating Commerce, pp. 21–45.

15

J. H. Harvey, ‘The nurseries on Milne’s land-use map’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, xxiv (1973), 177–98.

16

Post Office London Directory, 1841 (Part 1: Street, Commercial, & Trades Directories) (London, 1841), pp. 768–9.

17

For further discussion of the role of women in the nursery trade in this period, see D. Barre, ‘Enterprising women: shaping the business of gardening in the Midlands 1780–1830’, in Gardens and Green Spaces in the West Midlands since 1700, ed. M. Dick and E. Mitchell (Hatfield, 2018), pp. 102–19; Easterby-Smith, Cultivating Commerce, pp. 45–9.

18

‘Economic history: farm-gardening and market gardening’, in Victoria County History of Middlesex: xii: Chelsea, ed. P. Croot (2004), pp. 150–5 (British History Online <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol12/pp150-155> [accessed 14 Nov. 2017]).

19

R. Webber, The Early Horticulturists (Newton Abbott, 1968), p. 23.

20

Willson, West London Nursery Gardens, pp. 36, 48, 94–5; V.C.H. Middlesex, xii. 150; Johnstone’s London Commercial Directory and Street Guide (London, 1818), p. 283.

21

Webber, Early Horticulturists, p. 27.

22

J. Mangles, The Floral Calendar, Monthly and Daily. With Miscellaneous Details Relative to Plants and Flowers, Gardens and Greenhouses, Horticulture and Botany, Aviaries, &c. &c, (1839), p. 96.

23

J. Middleton, View of the Agriculture of Middlesex (London, 1798), p. 272.

24

Prices in this article have been converted to 2019 values using the average earnings index maintained by Measuring Worth, consistent with Roderick Floud’s recommendation. See Floud, Economic History, p. 12; ‘Five ways to compute the relative value of a U.K. pound amount, 1270 to present,’ Measuring Worth, 2020 <http://www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/> [accessed 20 July 2020].

25

Mangles, Floral Calendar, p. 97.

26

Mangles, Floral Calendar, pp. 98–100.

27

J. H. Harvey, Early Gardening Catalogues (1972), pp. 49–51, 56–7.

28

G.M., viii (1832), 130.

29

G.M., viii (1832), 130.

30

David Marsh used probate inventories to characterize the Stuart-era gardening trade in London, but by the early 19th century probate inventories were rare, leaving no information regarding business sizes in the testamentary sources consulted (Marsh, Gardens and Gardeners, pp. 380–96).

31

D. T. Jenkins, ‘The practice of insurance against fire, 1750–1840, and historical research’, in The Historian and the Business of Insurance, ed. O. E. Westall (Manchester, 1984), pp. 9–38, at p. 12.

32

Sun Fire records are indexed by the name of the policy holder to 1848, whereas Phoenix records require a policy number or an approximate renewal date to locate details of a specific business. In the absence of such information, this discussion covers Sun Fire records only.

33

London Metropolitan Archives (L.M.A.), Sun Insurance Company Registers, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/427/745555; CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/427/745556; CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/427/745563. From 1808 Sun Fire imposed a ceiling of £3,000 on extra-hazardous risks, which may have set Loddiges Nursery outside normal arrangements owing to numerous stoves and boilers on the premises. Insurance of larger enterprises was commonly split between insurers (see H. A. L. Cockerell and E. Green, The British Insurance Business: a Guide to its History and Records (2nd edn., Sheffield, 1994), pp. 31–3, 48.

34

Business premises were exempt from the window tax which remained in force until 1847, but excise duty on glass – a separate tax – was approximately twice the cost of production. The abolition of excise duty in 1845 halved the cost of glass for all uses (see T. C. Barker, The Glassmakers. Pilkington: the Rise of an International Company 1826–1976 (1977), pp. 29, 59, 78).

35

Studies in Capital Formation in the United Kingdom, 1750–1920, ed. C. Feinstein and S. Pollard (Oxford, 1988), pp. 14–15, 254.

36

Studies in Capital Formation, pp. 253, 256.

37

Many of the properties insured were on the outskirts of London in locations beginning to be encroached upon by housing development in the early 19th century, such as Hackney, Kensington and Islington, hence the comparison with agricultural rather than manufacturing property costs, where the residence was also less likely to be co-located with the business premises by this period.

38

Warwickshire Gardens Trust, Bitham Hall, Avon Dassett, Warwickshire: a Brief History (Warwick, 2001).

39

For discussion of the evolution of this neighbourhood and the trades that serviced it, see H. Greig, The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London (Oxford, 2013).

40

National Archives (T.N.A.), C 111/132, Day Book 1816. See also T. Longstaffe-Gowan, The London Town Garden, 1740–1840 (New Haven, Conn., 2001).

41

T.N.A., C 111/132, Day Book 1817; C 111/133, Ledger 1815–16. In June 1816, the duke of Grafton was charged £7 16s for the hire of 104 plants for a week and a further 21s a week for 5 weeks of continuing hire. See also Longstaffe-Gowan, The London Town Garden, pp. 167, 169, 173.

42

The business fulfilled very large orders of vegetable and flower seed between Jan. and March 1817, in preparation for sowing time, to Lord Leveson Gower (£11 7s 2d), Lord Eardley (£23 1s 6d), the earl of Stair (£43 7s 5d) and again in the first three months of 1818 and 1819, and to other customers outside London. See T.N.A., C 111/132, Day Book 1816–17.

43

T.N.A., C 111/133, Ledger 1813–15. Cochrane owed Harrison £272 3s 4d in Feb. 1812; Harrison was his largest supplier of seeds in this period.

44

T.N.A., C 111/132, Day Book, 1818.

45

T.N.A., C 111/133, Ledger 1813–15.

46

T.N.A., C 111/133, Ledger 1813–15. See also T.N.A., C 111/133, Ledger 1821.

47

G.M., xi (1835), 622.

48

G.M., ix (1834), 12.

49

L.M.A., B/HRS/03, Account Book, 1809–11.

50

L.M.A., B/HRS/387, Assignment for a Life Assurance for the Sum of £1,000 to Jacob George and John Wrench, 1 Jan. 1819.

51

L.M.A., B/HRS/389, Assignment of a Life Interest in a Moiety of 3 Leasehold Messuages; The London Gazette, 19011, pp. 66, 8 Jan. 1833. Although the appointment of official assignees by the lord chancellor to manage bankrupt’s estate was introduced in 1831, to combat fraud and incompetence in the voluntary assignment of a bankrupt’s estate in London creditors’ assignees continued to play a part in proceedings. See V. Markham Lester, Victorian Insolvency: Bankruptcy, Imprisonment, and Company Winding-Up in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1995), pp. 44–7.

52

L.M.A., B/HRS/03, Account Book.

53

G.M., xi (1835), 621–2.

54

L.M.A. B/HRS/013, Letter Book 1818–19, fo. 196r.

55

L.M.A. B/HRS/013, Letter Book 1818–19, Samuel Harrison to Lord Jersey, 20 June 1819, fo. 115r. The fifth earl of Jersey followed in his father’s footsteps: the fourth earl had been threatened with imprisonment in 1802 for his unpaid debts (see H. E. Maxwell, ‘George Bussy Villiers, fourth earl of Jersey (1735–1805)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-28295> [accessed 10 Aug. 2020]).

56

Lambeth Archives (L.A.), Colville Family Estate, IV/39/1.

57

Bills of exchange began to come into more general use after the financial crisis of 1825 so the lack of evidence of use probably indicates that these businesses were not among the early adopters of these instruments (see M. Poovey, Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth Century Britain (Chicago, Ill., 2008), pp. 36–42).

58

It is unclear from William Cobbett’s Rural Rides if some journeys were undertaken in connection with the business of his seed farm and whether Cobbett was engaged in debt collection and order-taking. G. D. H. Cole remarked that Cobbett’s rural rides mixed business with pleasure and Cobbett’s accounts of his journeys are often vague regarding his actual object at a destination. For an exception suggesting that his purpose was business, see W. Cobbett, Rural Rides (2 vols., London, 1912), ii. 19.

59

Willson, West London Nursery Gardens, p. 81; Harvey, Early Nurserymen, p. 10.

60

L.M.A., B/HRS/013, fo. 297r, Samuel Harrison to John Watson. See also B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People? England 1783–1846 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 398–9.

61

V.C.H. Middlesex, xii. 150–5.

62

G.M., i (1826), 31; see also G.M., v (1829), 220.

63

G.M., xi (1835), 159. Robert Sweet, Gerinaceae (London, 1820–8); The British Flower Garden (London, 1822); Cistineae (London, 1825–30); The Botanical Cultivator (London, 1821); The Florist’s Guide (London, 1827–32); Flora Australasica (5 vols., London, 1827–8).

64

Formerly Glycine sinensis, now Wisteria sinensis. See G.M., v (1829), 339.

65

G.M., v (1829), 339.

66

L.A., Colville Family Estate, IV/39. The nursery records appear to have survived as part of the papers of the Colville estate, from which James Colvill leased the site of his nursery. Colvill was not a member of this family. The nursery business was gradually wound up after the death of James Colvill the younger in 1832.

67

Colvill’s account book shows the repayment terms for these sums, with the note of the debt struck through in red upon repayment, a note of the date and the name of the banker who had issued the draft and confirmation that it had been honoured (see L.A., Colville Family Estate, IV/39).

68

L.A., Colville Family Estate, IV/39.

69

I. S. Cooke, ‘Whiteknights and the marquess of Blandford’, Garden History, xx (1992), 28–44, at p. 37.

70

H. Berry, ‘Polite consumption: shopping in eighteenth century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., xii (2002), 374–94, at p. 92.

71

Floud, Economic History, pp. 133–6.

72

Spaces of Consumption: Leisure and Shopping in the English Town, c.1680–1830, ed. J. Stobart, A. Hann and V. Morgan (London, 2007), pp. 18–22.

73

N. Thrift, ‘Transport and communication 1730–1914’, in An Historical Geography of England and Wales, 1730–1914, ed. R. A. Dodgshon and R. A. Butlin (London, 1990), pp. 453–86.

74

P. S. Bagwell, The Transport Revolution from 1770 (London, 1974).

75

L.M.A., B/HRS/013, fos. 105r–106r, fo. 129r.

76

L.M.A., B/HRS/013, fo. 112r.

77

L.M.A., B/HRS/013, fo. 133r; Harrison asked for a large order of peas to be sent ‘by the most ready water conveyance’ from Faringdon, then in Berkshire; J. H. Harvey, ‘The supply of plants in the north-west’, Garden History, vi (1978), 33–7, at p. 36. Harrison also shipped trees to William Gaunt in Loughborough (see L.M.A., B/HRS/95 and 96).

78

G.M., vii (1831), 37–8. Thumb pots were the size of a thumb.

79

G.M., vi (new ser.) (1840), 96–7.

80

G.M., vi (new ser.) (1840), 268.

81

G.M., xvi (new ser.) (1840), 605.

82

M. Thick, ‘Garden seeds in England in the eighteenth century – II: the trade in seeds to 1760’, Agricultural History Review, xxxviii (1990), 105–16.

83

Society of Antiquaries of London (S.A.L.), MS/872/3, Catalogue of Plants and Seeds Which Are Sold by Conrad Loddiges (London, 1804); Orchideae In the Collection of Conrad Loddiges and Sons … Organised According to Dr Lindley’s Genera and Species (London, 1839); Stove Plants in the Collection of Conrad Loddiges and Sons (London, 1842); Loddiges’ Palms (London, 1845). Quoted by kind permission of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

84

For an example of a tree catalogue, see Caldwell Archives, 1824 Tree Catalogue http://www.caldwellarchives.org.uk/plants/nursery-catalogues.html> [accessed 22 Apr. 2020].

85

A rare example of a priced catalogue from the early 19th century was issued by William Cobbett for his American Nursery. See Cobbett’s Weekly Register, lxiii (1827), 673–704.

86

Harvey, Early Nurserymen, p. 65.

87

G.M., vii (1831), 338.

88

The botanist Adrian Howarth recounted a visit to James Lee’s nursery where he walked in and wandered the nursery grounds without being challenged (see A. Howarth, Observations on the Genus Mesembryanthemum (London, 1794), p. 27).

89

L.A., Colville Estate, IV/39/1, Ledger 1810–12. See, e.g., Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm and daughters, Feb. 1811. Purchases in person or by personal instruction can be inferred from these accounts by the absence of the customary gratuity to the gardener. The gratuity was listed as a charge to the customer, but its value was subtracted from the ‘cash received’ column, by which means the businessman used the customer’s money to pay a commission to an intermediary. See, e.g., IV/39/5, Order Book 1834, 14 Apr.

90

L.A., Colville Estate, IV/39/1, Ledger 1810–12; IV/39/2, Cash book 1832; IV/39/3, Cash Book Feb. 1832–Nov. 1834; IV/39/4, Roehampton cash book Aug. 1833–Oct. 1834; T.N.A., C 111, James Cochrane Day Book 1816.

91

Colvill’s ledger for 1810–12 also shows multiple transactions by Lord Galloway, Lady Bathurst, Lord and Lady Portsmouth, Lady Chesterfield, the dowager marchioness of Lansdown, the countess of Northampton, Lord Torrington, the duke of Newcastle, the countess of Aberdeen and Lord Coventry.

92

L.A., Colville Family Estate IV/39/5, Order book 1834.

93

L.A., Colville Family Estate IV/39/5, Order book 1834.

94

1831a refers to L.A., Colville Family Estate IV/39/5, order book 1834.

95

Chester Records Office (C.R.O.), Caldwell’s Nurseries, Knutsford DDX 363/9, for all 1832 prices.

96

1831b refers to L.A., Colville Family Estate IV/39/7, Roehampton Nursery order book 1834.

97

C.R.O., Caldwell’s Nurseries, Knutsford DDX 363/9, for all 1830 prices.

98

L.M.A., B/HRS/013, Samuel Harrison Letter Book 1818–19, p. 124.

99

L.M.A., B/HRS/012, Samuel Harrison Valuation and Stock Book 1812, for 1812 prices.

100

Catalogue of Plants, which are sold by Conrad Loddiges & Sons, nurserymen, at Hackney, near London (London, 1820), for all 1820 prices.

101

C.R.O., Caldwell’s Nurseries, Knutsford DDX 363/2, William Caldwell Day Book 1790–5.

102

See S. H. Williamson and L. P. Cain, ‘Defining measures of worth: most are better than the CPI’ <https://www.measuringworth.com/defining_measures_of_worth.php> [accessed 12 Nov. 2018] for a discussion of the various ways in which historical worth can be assessed and the limitations of using the Consumer Price Index for historical comparisons.

103

C. H. Feinstein, ‘Pessimism perpetuated: real wages and the standard of living in Britain during and after the industrial revolution’, Journal of Economic History, lviii (1998), 625–58, at pp. 640–3.

104

L.A., Colville Family Estate IV/39/6, Men’s Time Book, Roehampton. In 1831 the weekly wage bill during much of the summer was a steady £10 10s 6d: ten staff at 13s 6d and one each at 12s 6d, 5s, 15s, £1 and £1 10s. Men appeared to have been paid by the hour or the half day, for payments varied from 13s to 14s 9d from week to week during the summer and reduced to 12s in the winter months for most staff.

105

E. Baines. History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (London, 1835), p. 443.

106

E. M. Boot, ‘Real incomes in the British middle-class, 1760–1850: the experience of clerks at the East India Company’, Economic History Review, lii (1999), 638–68, at p. 650.

107

Lord Beveridge, Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century: Volume 1 (London, 1965), pp. 421, 436.

108

L.A., Colville Family Estate IV/39/5, Order Book 1834; IV/39/7, Roehampton Nursery Order Book 1834.

109

Caldwell’s Nursery was chosen as a regional comparator owing to the extensive digitization of business records of the nursery carried out by Cheshire Gardens Trust. These records are available to view at a dedicated website <http://www.caldwellarchives.org.uk> [accessed 22 Apr. 2020]. For discussion of the business, see Uings, Moth and Stevenson, Caldwell’s, Nurserymen of Knutsford.

110

L.M.A., B/HRS/012, Samuel Harrison Valuation and Stock Book 1812; S.A.L., MS/872/3, Conrad Loddiges Catalogue 1820.

111

C.R.O., Caldwell’s Nurseries, Knutsford DDX 363/9. The extent to which the decline in prices can be attributed to the general deflation after 1815 is unclear; changes in cultivation techniques and competition would also have influenced prices within the nursery trade.

112

R. D. Hume, ‘The value of money in eighteenth-century England: incomes, prices and buying power – and some problems in cultural economics’, Huntington Library Quarterly, lxxvii (2014), 373–416.