Seeds of Fortune - a gardening dynasty
by Sue Shephard

This is the history of the Veitch family who dominated the 19th century nursery trade in Great Britain. Not unusually, the story starts in Scotland in 1760s where John Veitch trained with the Robert Dickson & Co and then set off to England to "better his position".
Firstly, he went to London and then down to Devon. Here partly working for the Acland family and partly for himself, John Veitch established a family business that survived for five generations into the early 20thcentury. During that time the Veitch's commissioned William Lobb, John Gould, Charles Maries, William Burbage, James Herbert, Ernest Henry Wilson ('Chinese Wilson') and William Purdom, to search all corners of the world for new and interesting plants. These plants were included in the Veitch catalogues and sold to the nouveau riche generated by the Victorian industrial revolution at handsome profits. Intense competition existed between nurserymen for novelty and being second in the market signalled commercial failure. In its heyday the Veitch family owned nurseries in London and Devon where the international novelties were grown, displayed and hybridised.
The greatest and last of the dynasty was Sir Harry Veitch, the 'Garden Knight' who played a major role in the affairs of the Royal Horticultural Society. While stoutly defending his own business interests he saw the need for effective taxonomic studies of his introductions by the Royal Botanic Garden Kew and even made public some of his breeding methods. The author has produced an eminently readable account of the Veitch family mirroring their expanding business against the commercial vibrancy of Victorian England. There is a useful list of sources that would provide a springboard to further, more detailed, scholastic studies.
Professor Geoffrey R Dixon

Seeds of Fortune - a gardening dynasty by Sue Shephard (300pp) is published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc,38 Soho Square, London W1D 3HB. Price £18.99. ISBN 0 7475 6066 8.

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