Dictating Until Death: The Extraordinary Life of Garden Revolutionary J.C. Loudon

April 8, 1783

On this day, dear readers, we celebrate the birth of that Scottish luminary, John Claudius Loudon—author, garden designer, botanist, and inventor of words we now casually toss about as if they had always existed. His books sit dusty on shelves while his ideas bloom eternally in gardens across Britain.

Loudon, bless his industrious Scottish soul, recognized what the burgeoning middle classes truly desired—smaller gardens that wouldn't require an army of servants to maintain.

While aristocrats frolicked in their vast estates, our pragmatic Scotsman catered to the modest ambitions of merchants and professionals who merely wanted a patch of green to call their own. In 1838, he declared in his charmingly titled The Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion:

"A suburban residence with a small portion of land attached will contain all that is essential to happiness."

One can only imagine the aristocracy's collective sniff of disdain at such democratic notions of contentment!

Not satisfied with merely writing books (dozens of them, mind you), Loudon created and published The Gardener's Magazine—starting as a quarterly publication that sold a rather impressive 4,000 copies of its first issue. Such was the public's appetite for horticultural wisdom that it soon became bi-monthly. Loudon, ever the innovator, used this platform to introduce a landscape perspective he called "gardenesque"—a term that sounds invented because, indeed, it was.

Before our Scottish friend began rearranging plants and opinions, the "picturesque" view dominated landscape design—all sweeping vistas and artfully arranged "natural" scenes. Loudon, however, found this entirely too modest for showcasing the exotic botanical treasures flooding into Britain from all corners of the Empire. His "gardenesque" style insisted on isolating specimen plants by removing surrounding vegetation or placing them in geometrical beds—rather like displaying one's colonial acquisitions in a living museum.

The "Gardenesque style," or The Plant Collector's Garden, with its formal features and botanical variety, proved immensely popular with Victorian gardeners, who never met an exotic plant they didn't wish to possess and display. Loudon particularly favored circular beds, still visible in the flower garden at Greenwich Park, because they showcase plants so effectively and because—in his remarkably honest words:

"Any creation to be recognized as a work of art, must be such as can never be mistaken for a work of nature."

Heaven forbid anyone should mistake your garden for something that occurred naturally!

Loudon's lexicographical contributions to gardening included coining the term "arboretum"—a garden of trees designed for scientific and educational purposes. He also advocated for public green spaces or "breathing zones" in cities, apparently believing that even the unwashed masses deserved occasional access to fresh air.

Behind this remarkable man stood an equally remarkable woman—writer Jane Webb, who became his wife and indispensable assistant. Loudon's physical challenges were considerable; reduced limb mobility after rheumatic fever in 1806 was followed by the amputation of his right arm at the shoulder in 1825—performed without anesthesia, as one did in those stoic times.

The final chapter of Loudon's life reads like Victorian melodrama. Around midnight on December 14, 1843, while dictating a book to his devoted Jane—the aptly titled Self-instruction to Young Gardeners—he collapsed into her arms and departed for whatever celestial garden awaited him. One hopes it was arranged in neat circular beds.