Garden plants and their hunters – Joachim Conrad Loddiges

The Loddiges family managed one of the most notable of the eighteenth and nineteenth century plant nurseries – they introduced exotic plants, trees, shrubs, ferns, palms and orchids into European gardens, and were particularly notable for having nurtured and established a wide range of crotons.

The founder of the nursery was Joachim Conrad Loddiges, borne in 1738. Conrad emigrated to Britain at the age of 19 during the 'Seven Years' War' to take up employment as a gardener for an family in Hackney and at this point the family name was anglicised so that it is also often spelt Lodidge.

In his forties he invested in a small seed business started by fellow German emigré John Busch, and Loddiges wrote to people all over the world, urging them to send him packets of seeds collected from their trips to their local surroundings – this gave his business a specialist market in Britain, and led to botanic gardens and rich estates all over Europe becoming his clients.

The nursery rose to great prominence under George Loddiges (1786-1846) who published 2000 coloured plates of rare plants introduced into its hothouses and gardens from around the world, and built the largest hothouse in the world to display the family collection of palms and orchids which was considered the best in Europe. The nursery became so famous that its plants were purchased by the imperial gardens of St Petersburg in Russia and the Adelaide Botanic Garden in South Australia.

Croton photograph by ghetic, used under a creative commons attribution licence

Plant Hunters