In the quiet corners of the RHS Lindley Library lies a treasure trove of 19th-century floral artistry – over 300 delicate watercolours by a woman whose name is barely known beyond the margins of botanical art history
George Don was the Horticultural Society’s second plant collector. He travelled along the western coast of Africa and the eastern coasts of the Americas in the 1820s.
Karl Theodor Hartweg was the Horticultural Society’s seventh plant collector, spending several years travelling around Central and South America between 1836 and 1843.
There are 2,500 varieties of apple in the UK, and a thousand varieties of pears. How did we organise and record so many fruit varieties before the invention of photography?