Thursday, May 26, 5:00 am – The Nineteenth Century Garden: John Lindley, Online
This Gardens Trust talk on May 26 is the fifth in the Gardens Trust’s 2nd series on Victorian Gardens on Thursdays @ 10.00 GMT. £5 each or all 6 for £30. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards. Register through Eventbrite HERE
John Lindley (1799-1865) was a leading figure in both horticulture and botany in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. For decades, he held three jobs simultaneously: Horticultural Society secretary, professor of botany at University College London, and director of the Chelsea Physic Garden. A prolific writer, he was a pioneering orchidologist and author of standard works on botany and horticulture.
But perhaps Lindley was most influential as editor of the Gardeners’ Chronicle. Founded in 1841, the weekly Gardeners’ Chronicle circulated widely in Britain and the colonies. It numbered Charles Darwin among its contributors and closely followed current affairs. It notably raised the alarm and tracked the progress of the calamitous potato blight. Kate Teltscher assesses the contribution of Lindley – ‘a man who’, to quote the Athenaeum, laboured ‘with the steam power of twenty’. She explores too the significance of the Gardeners’ Chronicle as a forum for social, scientific and colonial debate.
