Lee and Kennedy were two families of prominent Scottish nurserymen in partnership for three generations at the Vineyard Nursery in Hammersmith, west of London. [1] [2] "For many years," wrote John Claudius Loudon in 1854, "this nursery was deservedly considered the first in the world." [3]
Lewis Kennedy (b. Muthill, c.1721–1782) was gardener to Lord Wilmington at Chiswick, and had a nursery called "The Vineyard" at Hammersmith. [4] At the beginning of the 18th century, according to Loudon, the vineyard formerly at this site produced annually "a considerable quantity of Burgundy wine." [5]
In about 1745, Kennedy formed a partnership with James Lee (b. Selkirk, 1715–1795). Lee was a gardener who had apprenticed with Philip Miller at the Chelsea Physic Garden. [6] He became gardener to the 7th Duke of Somerset at the nearby Syon House, and to Lord Islay, later the third Duke of Argyll, at Whitton Park. [7] The Duke of Argyll, an enthusiastic gardener who imported large numbers of exotic species of plants and trees for his estate, "continued [Lee's] education and gave him the free use of his library." [7]
Many tropical and sub-tropical plants for British greenhouses and hothouses were first introduced to commerce by Lee and Kennedy. The first China rose was imported by Lee and Kennedy, in 1787, and the next year the first fuchsia, as Fuchsia coccinea now known as F. magellanica , which Loudon remembered they had sold at first for a guinea a plant. [8] In 1807 they introduced the dahlia to public cultivation. [9] In 1818 they introduced the French idea of roses grown as standards. [10]
James Lee was a correspondent with Carl Linnaeus, through Lee's connection with the Chelsea Physic Garden. He compiled an introduction to the Linnaean system, An Introduction to Botany, published in 1760, which passed through five editions. [11]
In 1774 the partnership issued a Catalogue of plants and seeds: sold by Kennedy and Lee, nurserymen. The partners also kept their name prominently before English garden-owners by regularly providing material for botanical illustrations in Curtis's Botanical Magazine . In addition, they were in correspondence with plant collectors in the Americas and with Francis Masson and others at the Cape of Good Hope, from which hardy and half-hardy plants and seeds were coming to be tested in English gardens and hothouses. [12]
Lewis Kennedy's son John Kennedy (b. Hammersmith, 8 October 1759, d. Eltham, 18 February 1842), raised in the family business, was a frequent contributor to the first five volumes (1799–1803) of the Henry Cranke Andrews publication The Botanist's Repository, for which he wrote most of the notes accompanying the illustrations, and contributed less frequently thereafter. Andrews was his son-in-law. [13] John Kennedy also was the writer of Page's Prodromus, an 1817 scholarly work published under the name of another son-in-law, William Bridgwater Page. [14]
According to Étienne Pierre Ventenat, [15] who named the Australian woody scrambler Kennedia to honor John Kennedy, the firm supplied roses for the Empress Josephine at Château de Malmaison during the lull in the Napoleonic Wars provided by the Peace of Amiens, 1802-03. Josephine's head gardener at Malmaison, Howatson, was English, but Alice M. Coats suggests that it was probably the well-established Scottish gardener and landscape designer, Thomas Blaikie, who put her in touch with Lee and Kennedy; her relation with a London-based firm was one of the curiosities of garden history, according to Coats. [16] By 1803 the Empress had run up an outstanding bill with them of £2600. She helped them support a young plant hunter, James Niven (1776–1827), at the Cape of Good Hope, in expectation of sharing boxes of seeds and plants of never-before-seen rarities of the scarcely botanized Cape Province: heaths, ixias, pelargoniums and others. [17] With the revival of war between France and Britain, John Kennedy had a special permit to come and go to the Continent, advising the Empress on the collection she was forming at Malmaison. There were setbacks: in 1804 she complained in a letter that shipments of seeds had been captured and detained; but in 1811 her expenditures with the firm again amounted to £700. [18] At Malmaison, she installed a plant nursery, to ready her imports for distribution among French growers.
Towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Tsar Alexander I and three of his family visited England. Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna, young widow of the Duke of Oldenburg, made a point of visiting Lee and Kennedy's nursery grounds at Hammersmith, reputed to be a magnet for any garden-minded visitor. [19]
Lewis Kennedy arranged for the appointment by Bryan Salvin of his brother John Kennedy (1719-90) as gardener on £30 a year plus accommodation at Croxdale Hall in County Durham. John worked there between 1748 and 1771, (before moving on to Parlington Hall) and from 1750 regularly ordered trees and plants from his brother's nursery for the three walled pleasure garden the Salvin family had him create. [20]
James Lee died in 1795, and was succeeded in the venture by his son, also named James Lee (1754–1824).
In 1818, Lewis Kennedy retired to Eltham, Kent, and his son John Kennedy continued in business with the younger James Lee under the established name. [21]
The firm was carried on for a third generation by two sons of James Lee, John Lee (c.1805 — 20 January 1899) and Charles Lee (8 February 1808 — 2 September 1881). [22] [23] John Lee retired in 1877. [22] From the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Lee and Kennedy had faced increasing competition, including Loddiges at Hackney, in the field of hardy new introductions of shrubs and trees. The nursery grounds at Hammersmith were built over, [24] followed by those at Ealing as London spread westwards, and the firm's last nurseries were at Feltham. [22]
Lewis Kennedy (1789–1877), son of John Kennedy and grandson of the nursery's founder, had worked in the family business as a young man at Château de Malmaison and at Navarre, in Normandy, for the Empress Josephine. [4] Upon returning to England, he designed numerous gardens in the new, formal style, including gardens at Chiswick House. [4] [25] In 1818, he was engaged as factor to the Drummond-Burrel Estates in Perthshire. [26] In 1828 he added responsibility as agent for the Willoughby de Eresby Estate at Grimsthorpe, Lincolnshire and the Gwydir Estate, now in Gwynedd, the ownership of all of which was linked by marriage. He was also commissioned by Arabella, Duchess of Dorset to design a lakeside walk of shrubs and ornamental trees, complete with a boathouse, at Buckhurst Park, Sussex. [27] He retired in 1868, by which time the estates for which he was responsible had been brought into prosperous order. Among his legacies is the formal flower garden at Drummond Castle, for which he worked on the scheme with the architect and landscape designer Sir Charles Barry. [28]
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Joséphine Bonaparte was Empress of the French as the first wife of Emperor Napoleon I from 18 May 1804 until their marriage was annulled on 10 January 1810. As Napoleon's consort, she was also Queen of Italy from 26 May 1805 until the 1810 annulment. She is widely known as Joséphine de Beauharnais.
The Château de Malmaison is a French château situated near the left bank of the Seine, about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) west of the centre of Paris, in the commune of Rueil-Malmaison.
The Loddiges family managed one of the most notable of the eighteenth and nineteenth century plant nurseries that traded in and introduced exotic plants, trees, shrubs, ferns, palms and orchids into European gardens.
James Drummond was an Australian botanist and naturalist who was an early settler in Western Australia.
Sir Harry James Veitch was an eminent English horticulturist in the nineteenth century, who was the head of the family nursery business, James Veitch & Sons, based in Chelsea, London. He was instrumental in establishing the Chelsea Flower Show, which led to his being knighted for services to horticulture.
The Honourable Sir William Macarthur was an Australian botanist and vigneron. He was one of the most active and influential horticulturists in Australia in the mid-to-late 19th century. Among the first viticulturists in Australia, Macarthur was a medal-winning wine-maker, as well as a respected amateur botanist and noted plant breeder.
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Webbiana', or Webb's curly-leaf elm, distinguished by its unusual leaves that fold upwards longitudinally, was said to have been raised at Lee's Nursery, Hammersmith, London, circa 1868, and was first described in that year in The Gardener's Chronicle and The Florist and Pomologist. It was marketed by the Späth nursery of Berlin in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as U. campestris WebbianaHort., and by Louis van Houtte of Ghent as U. campestris crispa (Webbiana). Henry thought 'Webbiana' a form of Cornish Elm, adding that it "seems to be identical with the insufficiently described U. campestris var. concavaefoliaLoudon" – a view repeated by Krüssmann.
The elm cultivar Ulmus 'Scampstoniensis', the Scampston Elm or Scampston Weeping Elm, is said to have come from Scampston Hall, Yorkshire, England, before 1810. Loudon opined that a tree of the same name at the Royal Horticultural Society's Garden in 1834, 18 feet (5.5 m) high at 8 years old "differed little from the species". Henry described the tree, from a specimen growing in Victoria Park, Bath, as "a weeping form of U. nitens" [:Ulmus minor ]; however Green considered it "probably a form of Ulmus × hollandica". Writing in 1831, Loudon said that the tree was supposed to have originated in America. U. minor is not, however, an American species, so if the tree was brought from America, it must originally have been taken there from Europe. There was an 'American Plantation' at Scampston, which may be related to this supposition. A number of old specimens of 'Scampstoniensis' in this plantation were blown down in a great gale of October 1881; younger specimens were still present at Scampston in 1911.
Thomas Meehan, was a noted British-born nurseryman, botanist and author. He worked as a gardener in Kew between 1846–1848, moving afterwards to Germantown in Philadelphia. He was the founder of Meehan’s Monthly (1891–1901) and editor of Gardener’s Monthly (1859–1888).
Louis Benoît van Houtte was a Belgian horticulturist who was with the Jardin Botanique de Brussels between 1836 and 1838 and is best known for the journal Flore des Serres et des Jardins de l'Europe, produced with Charles Lemaire and M. Scheidweiler, an extensive work boasting more than 2,000 coloured plates in 23 volumes published between 1845 and 1883.
Étienne Pierre Ventenat was a French botanist born in Limoges. He was the brother of naturalist Louis Ventenat (1765–1794).
James Herbert Veitch F.L.S., F.R.H.S., was a member of the Veitch family who were distinguished horticulturists and nursery-men for over a century.
Bernard McMahon or M'Mahon was an Irish-American horticulturist settled in Philadelphia, who served as one of the stewards of the plant collections from the Lewis and Clark Expedition and was the author of The American Gardener's Calendar: Adapted to the Climates and Seasons of the United States. He circulated the first extensive gardener's seed list in the United States, which he attached as an appendix to his Calendar. McMahon's most enduring contribution was his Calendar, the most comprehensive gardening book published in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. It finished in its eleventh edition in 1857. It was modeled on a traditional English formula, of month-by-month instructions on planting, pruning, and soil preparation for the "Kitchen Garden, Fruit Garden, Orchard, Vineyard, Nursery, Pleasure Ground, Flower Garden, Green House, Hot house and Forcing Frames". In some particulars, McMahon followed his English models so closely that J. C. Loudon suggested in 1826 that the derivative character of the Calendar was such that "We cannot gather from the work any thing as to the extent of American practice in these particulars." Ann Leighton notes the absence of Indian corn among the "Seeds of Esculent Vegetables" in 1806, though he lists old-fashioned favorites like coriander, corn-salad, orach, rampion, rocambole and skirret.
The Clapton Nursery also known as Mackay's Clapton Nursery and later Low's Clapton Nursery was a plant nursery established in the early 19th century by John Bain Mackay in Upper Clapton, London, and noted for its introductions of Australian and South American plants into cultivation.
Félix Delahaye was a French gardener who served on the Bruni d'Entrecasteaux voyage (1791–93) that was sent by the French National Assembly to search for the missing explorer Jean-François La Perouse. He was also one of the earliest European gardeners to work in Australia.
Buckhurst Park is an English country house and landscaped park in Withyham, East Sussex. It is the seat of William Sackville, 11th Earl De La Warr.
James Smith of Monkwood Grove was a Scottish botanist and nurseryman. He founded the Monkwood Botanic Garden in Maybole Parish which included several thousand species of exotic and native British plants. A regular consultant of his more eminent contemporaries, he is credited with the discovery of Primula scotica,Salix caprea pendula and several other species of plants. Owing to his particular interest in the flora of Scotland, he has been described as the "father of Scottish botany."
Lewis Kennedy may refer to:
The Field Elm cultivar Ulmus minor 'Viminalis Betulaefolia' (:'birch-leaved') is an elm tree of uncertain origin. An U. betulaefolia was listed by Loddiges of Hackney, London, in the catalogue of 1836, an U. campestris var. betulaefolia by Loudon in Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum (1838), and an U. betulifoliaBooth by the Lawson nursery of Edinburgh. Henry described an U. campestris var. betulaefolia at Kew in 1913, obtained from Fulham nurseryman Osborne in 1879, as "scarcely different from var. viminalis ". Melville considered the tree so named at Kew a form of his U. × viminalis, while Bean (1988), describing U. 'Betulaefolia', likewise placed it under U. 'Viminalis' as an apparently allied tree. Loudon and Browne had noted that some forms of 'Viminalis' can be mistaken for a variety of birch. An U. campestris betulaefolia was distributed by Hesse's Nurseries, Weener, Germany, in the 1930s.
Ninian Niven was a Scottish horticulturist and landscape gardener.