The 18th century marks the beginning of the concept of Modernism in Europe; and in Great Britain the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution were already becoming noticeable. Many future-oriented inventions were introduced in this period, such as the steam engine and the mechanical loom. An example of the expression of social development in England is the introduction of landscape gardens, which were first developed around London by the nobility, poets and artists, as well as politicians with liberal attitudes. As early as the middle of the 18th century, so-called ‘garden tourism’ became popular when these gardens were opened to the general public.

When George III (1738-1820) became king in 1760, he was not only the third British monarch from Hanover but, like his predecessors, a garden enthusiast. As a result, England moved more and more into the focus of German gardeners. It became a time when a new generation of German gardeners travelled to Britain in order to learn the new landscape garden style, because many of the German nobility wanted to create similar gardens for themselves. Nobles who could not travel to England to view the landscape gardens had to content themselves with travel descriptions and copper engravings. But this did not solve the question of how to lay out such a garden. An attempt was made to find a gardener who was well acquainted with the plants of British gardens and understood the rearing of popular American plants too.

After the personal union between Great Britain and Hanover in 1714, the ‘far’ British isles were already becoming of interest to young German gardeners. For most of the journeymen whose fathers were already in electoral service in Hanover, a stay in England became a duty. Horticultural education in Germany usually lasted three years and was then followed by three years of travelling. To accommodate this, a passport was issued to the journeymen, who were thus able to visit different gardens and receive a comprehensive training in gardening fashions and techniques. About 160 passports were issued in Hanover for this purpose.

One of the first and most interesting documents from this period is a Certificate of Apprenticeship, signed by the famous English court gardener Charles Bridgeman (1690-1738) on 4 February 1738 for Matthias Charbonnier (1710-1750), the son of the Herrenhausen garden’s designer Ernst August Charbonnier (1677-1747):

I do hereby certify that Matthew Charbonnier was directed by her late Majesty to be put under my care and instruction, for this improvement in the Art of Gardening, and that he has accordingly been&hellip.

Most of these gardeners only remained for their training in England and then returned home.

One who remained in England was Johann Busch (c1730-1795, also known in England as John Busch). In 1744 he had come to England with a delegation from Herrenhausen, which included the diplomat and garden architect Friedrich Karl von Hardenberg (1696-1763), the garden designer Matthias Charbonnier and the court gardener Georg Ernst Tatter (1689-1755). Busch worked successfully in England for almost 30 years. In Hackney, at that time a village on the Thames marshes, Busch opened an import-nursery business, conveying primarily North American seed boxes to Northern Germany, and only secondarily selling plants which he had propagated himself and which he offered in a catalogue. Busch moved to Russia in 1771 after being appointed by Tsarina Catherine the Great to lay out the park at the Imperial palace of Tsarskoe Selo. As a result, Busch sold his horticulture business to his compatriot Joachim Conrad Loddiges (1738-1826).

Busch‘s successor came from an old court gardener’s family. Loddiges’ grandfather, Heinrich, was the court gardener in the Welf Castle of Herzberg on the edge of the Harz Mountains , and his father Caspar worked for Count von Goertz at the Castle Wrisbergholzen near Hildesheim, where young Conrad was born. Conrad obtained his gardener training in Hanover, and at the end of this three-year-training period in 1757 he received a report written by Joseph Conrad Weffer, the head of the eight-hectare royal kitchen garden in Linden/Hanover. Four years later, Conrad came to England in the company of his long-term employer John Baptist Sylvester, a Dutch army physician and naturalist who owned a house in Hackney.

Loddiges’ starting capital was very low, and it was only by 1777 that he had paid the complete purchase price to Busch for the business. But right from the beginning Loddiges’ nursery in Hackney flourished and was profitable. In 1781 he proudly reported that he had to water 100,000 pots in the summer. Conrad Loddiges grew increasingly exotic plants such as palm trees, tropical ferns and orchids, which he began to import in 1812. His customers included not only the botanical gardens in Würzburg and Geneva, but he also supplied plants to the Royal Parks and to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. By around the year 1800 Loddiges & Sons was possibly the largest nursery with the most extensive greenhouses in the world. In 1816 Loddiges published a report about a central heating system for greenhouses and two years later he erected a steam-heated palm house on his grounds. When Conrad died in 1826, Loddiges & Sons was perhaps the most famous and largest nursery for the importation of exotic plants in the world.

The gardener Jakob Rinz (1809-1860), son of the famous Frankfurt urban gardener Sebastian Rinz (1782-1861), appreciated Loddiges’ nursery, which he expressed in a letter published in The Gardener’s Magazine 1829:

“Like almost every foreign gardener who visits England, I arrived in London full of expectation and curiosity. The first garden I visited was that of Messrs. Loddiges, and never shall I forget the sensation produced in me by this establishment. I cannot describe the raptures I experienced on seeing that immense palm house. All that I had before seen of the kind appeared nothing to me compared with this. (…) I was surprised at the vast ranges of green-houses and hot-houses; particularly at the beautiful curvilinear camelia house, in which the plants produced the most beautiful effect. The whole collection seemed perfectly well kept…”

The business of Loddiges & Sons was passed on to Conrad’s sons George (1786-1846) and Willam (1776-1849) and after their deaths to Conrad Jr (d1856), George’s son. The famous 15-acre nursery had to be closed in 1853 due to various reasons such as the cancellation of property contracts and the urban sprawl of London. The famous Loddiges palm collection of about 300 palms was then taken to Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace in Sydenham. Many plants from the famous collection were then sent to Kew and the orchid collection was sold in two auctions. Although nothing in Hackney reminds us of the then well-known nursery, the Loddiges’ family papers can be found in the Hackney Archives Department, such as ‘The Botanical Cabinet’. This botanical journal was published by the Loddiges family between 1817 and 1833 with 2000 hand-coloured engraved plant plates from drawings by various artists – these are sometimes sold today by Sotheby’s and other auctioneers for several thousand pounds each.

And what of Conrad Loddiges’ predecessor John Busch? He returned to England from Russia at the end of his life, but his reasons for doing so remain obscure. Busch died on 22 May, 1795, in his house in Isleworth.