Endangered species

Among the serially misused words of our time — celebrity, passion, caring, genius — we must surely count ‘plantsman’. Thirty years ago, it was a term given only to exceptionally knowledgeable, enthusiastic and botanically inclined amateur or professional gardeners, as well as to particularly experienced and thoughtful nurserymen. However, in recent years, ‘plantsman’ or ‘plantswoman’ has come to mean anyone who knows the difference between Amaryllis and Hippeastrum, or who puts a plant in the garden where they think it will be happy, rather than consciously associating it in colour and season with others.

Plantsmen knew the names, provenances and, where necessary, complex cultural requirements of all their plants. They nurtured chance seedlings in their gardens or consciously bred new hybrids, which they named, and then put up for awards at the RHS ‘Fortnightly’ Shows in London. They would contribute money to plant-hunting expeditions, spend their spare time visiting co-religionists, swap plants which were not always available from nurseries, and botanise in the Dolomites or Greece in their holidays.