The Loddiges family (not uncommonly mis-spelt Loddige) managed one of the most notable of the eighteenth and nineteenth century plant nurseries that traded in and introduced exotic plants, trees, shrubs, ferns, palms and orchids into European gardens.

Founding and rise

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The founder of the nursery was Joachim Conrad Loddiges (1738-1826). He was born in Hildersheim, a German province where his father Casper Lochlies was a gardener to the Elector of Hanover, George II of England. Conrad emigrated to Britain at the age of 19 during the 'Seven Years' War' to take up employment as a gardener for an influential medical family in the village of Hackney, north of London. It was then that the family name was anglicised. When, in his forties he married, he had accumulated sufficient knowledge and savings to expand a small seed business started by fellow German emigree John Busch, from where he began to write to people all over the world, urging them to send him packets of seeds collected from trips to native hills, valleys and plains. From these small beginnings, the nursery business gained a specialist market in Britain, and was increasingly able to attract clients from estates and botanical gardens throughout Europe.

The nursery rose to great prominence during the early nineteenth century 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 best collection of palms and orchids in Europe. George Loddiges also linked the nursery into the scientific circles of the day, becoming a Fellow of the Microscopical Society (FMS), Fellow of the Linnean Society (FLS), Fellow of the Horticultural Society (FHS), and Fellow of the Zoological Society (FZS) in London, for he had wide interests in scientific subjects beyond botany, becoming particularly knowledgeable about early microscopy and one aspect of ornithology (humming-birds). Abroad the nursery's influence spread to the imperial gardens of St Petersburg in Russia and the Adelaide Botanic Garden in South Australia.

Although the business closed in the 1850s, it leaves an important legacy in many of our gardens and parks, since a number of the attractive plants we take for granted, were first introduced into cultivation by Loddiges Nursery.

Origins under Joachim Conrad Loddiges

On 2nd January 1770, following his marriage, Joachim Conrad Loddiges wrote to his longstanding employer, Dr Silvester, asking for advice about his plan to move on from head gardener and grounds keeper, and set up a small seed and gardening business in the village of Hackney, north of London, with assistance from a fellow German emigree, Johan (syn. John) Busch. Busch was appointed as chief gardener to Catherine the Great and the two remained in contact - it is through this connection that the Loddiges had a role in importing and establishing rhubarb in Britain. Seed packets were received from all over the world, sometimes from well-known botanical explorers such as John Bartram and William Bartram in North America (who also favoured Quaker horticulturalists such as Peter Collinson with discoveries), and sometimes from ordinary travellers.

One of the first plant species to be introduced into cultivation in Britain by Conrad Loddiges was the Common Mauve Rhododendron Rhododendrum ponticum, although he had introduced this whilst working for Dr Silvester, well before setting up his seed business, and had shared the seeds and young plants with those who could encourage botany in more elevated circles such as the Marquis of Rockingham.

Prominence under George Loddiges

Conrad's son George Loddiges is generally credited with raising the profile of the exotic Hackney nursery at least as greatly, if not more so, than his eminent horticulturalist father. In 1833 the Loddiges began using the newly developed Wardian Case to transport live plants from Australia.

For example, the term 'arboretum' was first used in an English publication by J. C. Loudon in 1833 in The Gardener's Magazine when commenting on George Loddiges' famous Hackney Botanic Garden arboretum, begun in 1816, and open free to the public for educational benefit every Sunday. Loudon wrote: The arboretum looks better this season than it has ever done since it was planted... the more lofty trees suffered from the late high winds, but not materially. We walked round the two outer spirals of this coil of trees and shrubs; viz. from Acer to Quercus. There is no garden scene about London so interesting.

A plan of George Loddiges' arboretum was included in The Encyclopaedia of Gardening 1834 edition, and the interest this aroused helped inspire Loudon to write his encyclopaedic book Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, first published in 1838. Alhough this incorporated drawings from several early botanic gardens and parklands throughout the UK, it relied greatly upon, and would not have been possible without, George Loddiges' well labelled arboretum. It was on the collection maintained by this firm more than any other that J.C.Loudon relied for living material in the preparation of his great work W.J.Bean notes in Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, today's standard reference work.

Another notable visitor was Charles Darwin who in September 1838 wrote "Saw in Loddiges garden 1279 varieties of roses!!! Proof of capability of variation"

Although George Loddiges' arboretum was widely praised, his better known horticultural endeavour was to establish the world's largest hothouse in his Hackney Botanic Nursery, and invent a system of warm mist-like rain to maintain beautiful tropical palms, ephiphytic orchids, ferns and camellias in almost perfect environmental conditions akin to a 'tropical rainforest'.

George Loddiges' tropical hothouse range made use of recently invented curvilinear iron glazing bars and central heating systems, which together with his own inventions, enabled many new species of tropical plant to be introduced into cultivation, or flower for the first time in Europe. Visiting the hothouses on 30 March 1822, the Quaker pharmacist William Allen, his Cousin Emily Birkbeck and Anna Hanbury noted: We all went to Loddiges Nursery to see the camellias which are now in full bloom and very beautiful ! There is quite a forest of them: his hot-houses are, perhaps, the most capricious in the world: one off them is forty feet high: in this there is a banana tree which nearly reaches the top. A few years later, in 1829, Jacob Rinz (a visitor from a Frankfurt nursery) commented: never shall I forget the sensation produced by this establishment. I cannot describe the raptures I experienced on seeing that immense palm house. All that I had seen before of the kind appeared nothing to me compared with this. I fancied myself in the Brazils; and especially at that moment when Mr Loddiges had the kindness to produce, in my presence, a shower of artificial rain.

So infectious was the interest that George Loddiges and fellow nurserymen created during the early nineteenth century in the splendour of new ferns, trees, palms - indeed plants of all kinds - that he was prompted to begin marketing a series of volumes containing coloured engravings of the many new species and varieties. Entitled The Botanical Cabinet it ran to twenty volumes and 2,000 plates. Facing each plant portrait, George Loddiges added a few lines of text outlining the source of the seeds and invariably adding a religious perspective. Many of the drawings for the publications were made by George's daughter Jane and the young Edward Cooke who became a leading Victorian artist.

The Horticultural Society awarded George Loddiges numerous medals throughout this period: Silver Medal, 1818, 1819; Silver Medal (Sir Joseph Banks Memorial Portrait Prize), 1823, 1826, 1832, 1835; President's Silver Medal, 1836; Silver Flora Medal, 1837.

In the late 1830s George Loddiges became involved in the design and landscaping of one of the Magnificent Seven London garden cemeteries associated with burial reform: Abney Park Cemetery. Sensitively preserving the existing early eighteenth century parkland laid out by Lady Mary Abney and Isaac Watts, he introduced an educational landscape around the perimeter which was open to the public free of charge: a vast arboretum of 2,500 species and varieties, labelled alphabetically from A to Z rather than arranged in a more conventional way. Close to the Abney Park Chapel he also laid out a rosarium to complement the chapel's 'botanical' or ten-part -as in the five sepals and five petals of Rosaceae - rose windows; and may have influenced the architect William Hosking and client George Collison II in thir final choice of Egyptian Revival ornamentation for the main entrance: the botanical imagery of Lotus flowers, and their sepals.

Closure under Conrad Loddiges II

On the death of George Loddiges in 1846, the nursery business passed to his son Conrad Loddiges II (1821-1865), who found it increasingly difficult to negotiate a new lease from the land-owner (St. Thomas' Hospital), given the much higher prices the land could now command for housing development, due to London's growth into the surrounding countryside. Similarly, the part of the nursery that was owned by the Loddiges family in freehold, was becoming more valuable as building land, whilst losing its attractive countryside village setting. Conrad was involved with the display of ferns and terrariums for the Great Exhibition. Ultimately the nursery closed in 1854 when the lease from St. Thomas' Hospital expired. Conrad Loddiges II offered the whole of the exotic plant stock was to Kew Gardens for a sum of £9000 (20 years earlier the collection was valued at £200,0000) but this was refused. Paxton purchased 300 palms and plants for the Crystal Palace and the Illustrated London News of August 5 1854 reported the move of a large palm tree from the nurseries to Sydenham. The remaining stock was sold in four lots at auction.

Burial and Remembrance

Today, memorials to members of the Loddiges family can be seen in Hackney at St. John-at-Hackney Church and Abney Park Cemetery.

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