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The Gardeners of the Eighth Lord Petre1
By Sir George Glutton
(Ovington, Essex)
The re-establishment of peace in Europe and on the high seas
following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 led to a very substantial
increase in the tempo of the introduction into this country of new
species of foreign plants. In addition the scope of the gardener's
activities had been much enlarged by the mastery of the art of
constructing "stoves" or hothouses that did not burn down and
which through the use of hotbeds of tanner's bark successfully
reproduced the hot but humid conditions essential for the grow-
ing, flowering, and fruiting of tropical plants. By 1730 most noble-
men and gentlemen of means interested in gardening (and garden-
ing under George II was coming very much into fashion) had built,
or were in the process of constructing, their own hothouses, green-
houses and pineries.
The increase of the number of species that could be cultivated
in a garden and the need of a gardener to be proficient in the
management of "stoves" greatly aggravated the garden-owner's
eternal problem, namely, finding a competent man with character
and habits compatible with his own. When Lord Jersey set up his
ananna-house or pinery at Middleton, his then gardener was
overwhelmed and Jersey wrote frantically to Peter Collinson
asking for help in finding a new one. Various names were sug-
gested and rejected, for Jersey was patently a difficult employer
and insisted, for instance, that the new gardener must be single
or that if he were compelled to accept a married man, it must
be clearly understood from the outset that the wife must never
come near the house.2 Dr Richard Richardson of North Brierly,
in Yorkshire, searching for a new gardener, had finally to accept
one completely inexperienced in the management of hothouses,
though anxious to learn. He was Henry Pott, formerly gardener
to a Mr Masters and recommended by John Blackburne of Orford
Hall, near Warrington in Lancashire, another noted botanist-
gardener of the North.3
It has sometimes been said that Philip Miller of the Physic
Garden at Chelsea and author of the classic Gardener's Dictionary
was gardener to the eighth Lord Petre, or at least managed his
garden, first at Ingatestone Hall and then at Thorndon Hall, to
which he moved shortly after his marriage in May 1732.4 There
does not seem to be any evidence for this and the claim may
have sprung from a confusion of Philip Miller with John Miller
who, as will be seen later, became gardener at Thorndon in 1742.
Miller, however, was one of Lord Petre's earliest acquaintances in