Peter Collinson (1694-1768)
It is not known why Peter Collinson’s father felt it necessary to send him, at the tender age of two, to live with his grandmother in Peckham but gardeners in England & around the world would come to be thankful for the decision. For it was at Peckham that the young boy developed his gardening skills & the plant collecting bug which became a life long obsession. It was a formal garden, in the style of the period, noted for its topiary & lawns. As a child Peter remembered being taken to buy clipped yew hedges in the shapes of birds, dogs & men from the best nurserymen in London, suppliers such as Wrench of Parson’s Green & Parkinson of Lambeth. He would have been fascinated by the extraordinary nursery garden of Thomas Fairchild at Hoxton because Fairchild was a plant collector extraordinaire, uniquely skillful in germinating & nurturing exotic species including hothouse plants & fruits. His tree collection included important introductions from the American Colonies such as the tulip tree, American sycamore & the red flowered horse chestnut. These he supplied to the great houses & gardens of the age. One such garden belonged to Dr. Henry Compton, Bishop of London. As a child, Peter regularly visited this garden at Fulham Palace. In later years he reminisced wistfully, “Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, was a great lover of rare plants, as well such as came from the West Indies as North America, & had the greatest collection in England. After his death, the see was filled by Bishop Robinson, a man destitute of any such taste, who allowed his gardener to sell what he pleased, & often spoiled what he could not otherwise dispose of.”
The small garden in Peckham was inherited from his maternal grandmother . The garden was locally famous & consisted of a square plot, bisected by a path. At one end was a greenhouse in which Collinson kept his tender exotics. The layout was arranged so that most of the flower beds caught the morning sun, which was, according to Collinson, important especially for the American plants...The Peckham plants were grown in long flowerbeds between 3 & 4 feet wide & all were labelled with numbers painted on pales or stakes placed in the soil, or drawn directly on the wall in the case of climbers & espalier fruit. These numbers were cross-referenced to a catalog of names - possibly like the classification beds at Kew Gardens.
Collinson also had a special germinating bed in Peckham, 6 foot by 3, for his newly arrived American plants. His own garden at Peckham was not designed for contours & landscape, rather it was as complete a collection of rare & exotic specimen trees & herbaceous species as could be found outside Miller’s Chelsea Physic garden (which itself, derived in part from Collinson). Carl Linnaeus visited Collinson in his Peckham garden in late July 1736.
The Collinson family were well connected with leading figures in London, none more influential than Sir Hans Sloane who owned a massive private collection of natural specimens & archaeological artifacts from all over the world. Young Peter enjoyed helping Sloane catalog & display his collection & the 2 became close friends. It was Sloane who put Philip Miller in charge of the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1722 with the specific brief to develop rare exotic introductions ... The passion for new plants was the basis of a lasting friendship with Collinson, a relationship of some significance later for it was Miller who developed a comprehensive Botanical dictionary, which became the plant bible for gardeners on both sides of the Atlantic. Miller’s dictionary was published & financed in Pennsylvania by the good offices of Peter Collinson through another of his ... lifelong friends, Benjamin Franklin. Published in 1731, It was the first volume of its type to include helpful notes on the culture & maintenance of plants & was largely responsible for putting the art of gardening within reach of the ordinary man, a virtual reformation within horticulture, once the exclusive province of a privileged few.
As young Peter Collinson entered the textile trade of his father, his interest in plant introductions became an expensive pastime. For example, he financed the publication of Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida & the Bahama Islands. This seminal volume, the most costly book of its day, consisted of etchings & notes from Catesby’s collections of plants on his trip to the Americas, a trip itself made possible by sponsors found by Collinson.
He was not the first to develop an interest in plants from the Americas, nor the first to acquire the knowledge & skills necessary for the cultivation of exotic species but he was the first to apply the principles of business to this enterprise & it was through his business skills that these rare & hitherto prohibitively expensive plants became accessible throughout the country & found their way into the great parks & gardens of the age. He was well acquainted with the ships’ captains who plied the busy Thames dockyards just down the street from his London Grace Street office & through them was able to send & receive packages across the major trading routes of the world. In particular, he exploited his connections with North America persuading them to send him specimens both animal & vegetable from that continent but was frequently frustrated. “What was common with them but rare with us, they did not think worth sending. Thus I laboured in vain or to little purpose for some years for but few seeds of plants……neither money nor friendship would tempt them…”
In 1734 he received a letter from John Custis of Williamsburg, Virginia. Custis was a man of considerable charm & influence in Virginia. His son who died at 25 years had been married to Martha, later to become the wife of George Washington & he was a friend to the young Thomas Jefferson. He had been educated in England, had known Catesby during his 7 year stay in Virginia sharing his enthusiasm for the exchange of foreign plants...
His gifts probably crossed with corresponding boxes on passing ships in the Atlantic. Collinson writes, “I am much obliged to you for your kind present but what much enhances the obligation, on my side, is that being an entire stranger you should take so much pains to gratify me. I can’t enough commend the method you took to convey this rare plant to my hands by sending the seed by one ship & the plant by another………..As a small token of my gratitude for your favour I desire your acceptance of a box of horse chestnuts. Why this name is imposed on this noble tree I can’t say for no horse that I ever heard will eat the nuts …….”.
Their friendship flourished & they had much in common, both being men of business with exceptional knowledge of the shipping trade. Their correspondence lasted until Custis ‘ death in 1749. Some quaint & interesting items emerge from it. For example, in reference to what we now call a tomato, Collinson asks Custis, “Pray what sort of fruit is your wild scarlet plum. Is it more for show than for taste….Apples of love are very much used in Italy to put when ripe into their broths & soups giving it a pretty tart taste….. They call it tamiata. I never tried it but I think to do it….”
It is nothing short of miraculous that Peter Collison managed to maintain his business & family life whilst keeping up the correspondence with all his gardening friends & contacts. He had by now attracted the attention of the major botanists of the age with whom he corresponded enthusiastically, notably Carl Linnaeus, & Peter Kalm of Sweden, Jan Frederik Gronovious of Amsterdam, Bernard Jussieu in Paris & Dr. Amman in Russia who from Siberia sent him many exotic trees & shrubs.
Although Peter Collinson is best remembered for his North American introductions, it should be noted that significant contributions came from other parts of the world. One of Peter Collinson’s introductions is now the very common street tree, Ailanthus altissima, the tree of heaven. He wrote in his journal of this tree, “A stately tree raised from seed from Nankin in China, in 1751 sent over by Father D’Incarville, my correspondent in China to whom I have sent many seeds in return; he sent it to me & to the Royal Society. I have from China a tree of surprising growth that much resembles a Sumach, which is the admiration of all that see it. It endures our winters. We call ours the Varnish Tree”
Father D’Incarville also sent him the magnificent Pagoda tree...Another memorable East Asian introduction was the paper mulberry, Broussonetia papyrifera of which he wrote, “1751 Raised this year a mulberry from seed sent from China; it proves the paper mulberry described by Dr. Kaemfer in his Amoenitates exoticae, which I have given to the Chelsea gardens, to the Duke of Argyle, Lord Lincoln etc.,,”
A pressing issue of the times & one which resulted in an extreme polarization of views - the issue of plant nomenclature. Principle combatants were Linneaus & Miller, both had a reputation to lose: Linnaeus’ Systema naturae versus Philip Miller’s dictionary; academic aristocracy in conflict with practical horticulture. Miller was a man of the soil; Linnaeus was on a personal crusade to convince the international community to accept a binomial naming system based entirely on the sexual organs of plants.
Linnaeus arrived from Holland in 1736, the year after publication of Systema naturae, which expounded the principles of his binomial Latin nomenclature. As an employee of the Dutch East India Company, his mission, ostensibly, was to add to the Dutch collection of American species. His chief agenda, however, was to persuade the English botanical community to support his new naming system & first on his list was Peter Collinson. Linnaeus was very impressed with Collinson’s collection at Peckham...Collinson maintained a cordial & extensive correspondence with him & took no side other than that which might advance the cause of international harmony & understanding & the development of horticulture. As a result, Linnaeus’ colleague, Peter Kalm visited the Peckham garden...
A yet more important North American contact emerged in Pennsylvania though the intermediary offices of Benjamin Franklin...put him in touch with a farmer from Philadelphia called John Bartram. To his delight, Bartram was willing to send over boxes of materials & to do so as regularly as the unpredictable nature of shipping would allow. For this Collinson agreed to pay 5 guineas a box & so the stream of roots & seeds, dried insects & stuffed birds began. In return Collinson sent books, plant material & even clothes, being ever mindful of the practical needs of his correspondent. They never met but their friendship was lifelong & profound. A small sense of it may be gleaned from the numerous letters, which passed between them. A typical early exchange is dated February 1735. Bartram writes; “I am greatly obliged to thee for thy present of a suit of clothes which came in the right time…”
John Bartram was a farmer, a son of a farmer, a man who built his own house & was hardened to the demands of the newly settled ‘back lands’ of Pennsylvania. He had plenty to fill his days but was possessed of an extraordinary enthusiasm for natural science & found the time for lengthy correspondence with like-minded planters & settlers on the eastern seaboard of North America. He created a model garden with an extensive collection of curiosities. No lesser international figure than Carl Linneaus called him “the greatest natural botanist in the world... “ Bartram lived at the sharp edge of 3 competing cultures, English, French & indigenous. Bartram was a man hardened by the realities of a hostile frontier. Collinson was no adventurer & traveled rarely... Collinson with Franklin’s help, lobbied powerful contacts on both sides of the Atlantic to have Bartram named as Botanist to the King (George III) in 1765, a position which gave him a significant annual income.
Where Bartram was unsure of a plant name he sent pressed samples & kept a numbered copy. Peter Collinson would, with Philip Miller’s assistance, identify the specimen & send back a reference. He sent Bartram a copy of Philip Miller’s invaluable ‘Gardeners’ Dictionary’ via the Pennsylvania library, their normal means of communication. Collinson was careful to keep the American soil, which accompanied the plants in their boxes & he used it in his garden to acclimatize the seedlings. The costs of this operation were significant but were offset by the formation of a subscription service, a network established by Collinson & affectionately called the ‘Brothers of the Spade...’
In 1749, on the death of his wife’s father, Peter Collinson inherited Ridgeway House in Mill Hill together with 8 acres, a perfect site for his garden. He spent the next two years transplanting the entire collection & settled into his new home with great satisfaction; "Very few gardens (he records) if any excel mine at Mill Hill for the rare exotics which are my delight...”
Peter Collinson had a greenhouse at Mill Hill, & in February 1768 he gave a description to Bartram stating that …”whilst snow covered the garden without… out of my parlour I go into my Greenhouse 42 foot long which makes a pretty walk to smell the sweets of so many odoriferous plants, Winter without but Summery within...”
Though the garden had many of John Bartram’s American species, there were also many curiosities from elsewhere… & it is important to realize that Peter Collinson not only knew his plants but each one acted as a mnemonic for his friendships. With Bartram & Linnaeus Collinson shared his love of plants, but with Colden he added recollections of these friends: “As often as I survey my Garden & Plantations it reminds Mee of my Absent Friends by their Living Donations...
Ultimately, by 1767 there were signs that Peter Collinson was starting to curtail his horticultural activities. In September 1767, he warned Bartram that unless anything new or rare turned up, he should send nothing more. By the following year, August 1768, Peter Collinson had died...
From the Mill Hill Preservation Society
