DAVID CAMERON (1831-1847)

John Claudius Loudon, the designer of the garden was instrumental in recruiting David Cameron, its first Curator. He was an excellent practical grower and was responsible for implementing Loudon’s vision. The tender Hibiscus cameronii was named after him.

WILLIAM BRADBURY LATHAM (1868-1903)

Our most distinguished Curator, was an orchid and fern specialist who had worked at Chatsworth for the Duke of Devonshire, Kew and the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. He is remembered here in our fern garden and in the sub-tropical house, where his unique hybrid tree fern Dicksonia x lathamii still grows – more than 140 years after it was bred in 1872.

ERNEST HENRY WILSON (1893-97)

Possible the most successful and certainly the most prolific of plant hunters – ‘Chinese’ Wilson served his apprenticeship here under Latham’s Curatorship. He travelled extensively, making four trips to China and introduced many spectacular and now common garden plants. He became the keeper of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University in Boston, where he died tragically young in a car crash in 1930. He was sent to China to collect the seed of the Handkerchief tree Davidia involucrata, which grows here in the Wilson border. He will shortly be honoured with a blue plaque at the entrance to the gardens for his contribution to botany and horticulture. [Wilson, centre, in the bowler hat].

Davidia involucrata