Serpentine Paths and Magnolia Dreams: The Life of Alexander Garden

April 15, 1791

On this day, the ever-so-clever Alexander Garden of Charleston, South Carolina, drew his final breath at the age of 61, succumbing to the ravages of tuberculosis. A man whose correspondence was as prolific as it was enlightening, Garden's letters to the botanical luminaries of his day reveal a mind trapped in urban tedium while yearning for wilderness.

The Gardenia flower, that intoxicating bloom with its heady fragrance, bears his name—though not through any discovery of his own!

Oh, the delicious irony of botanical politics!

In 1757, a friend of the great Linnaeus wrote to the master taxonomist, "Mr. Miller has called it Basteria," to which Linnaeus replied with surprising warmth, "I would call it Gardenia, from our worthy friend Dr. Alexander Garden of S. Carolina." Further promising, "If Dr. Garden will send me a new genus, I shall be truly happy to name it after him, Gardenia."

Two years later, Linnaeus made good on his promise, dedicating the newly discovered tropical shrub to Garden—a plant the difficult doctor had never even encountered!

In one particularly revealing letter to John Bartram, Garden's frustration practically leaps from the page:

Think that I am here, confined to the sandy streets of Charleston, where the ox, where the ass, and where man, as stupid as either, fill up the vacant space, while you range the green fields of Florida.

One can hardly miss the delicious contempt in his comparison of his fellow Charlestonians to oxen and asses! Such candor from a gentleman of science!

To John Ellis, Garden confessed the stimulating effect of their botanical correspondence:

I know that every letter which I receive not only revives the little botanic spark in my breast, but even increases its quantity and flaming force.

What few admirers of the humble gardenia realize is that its namesake created one of the most splendid estates in colonial America. In 1771, Garden purchased a 1,689-acre property he renamed "Otranto," likely after Horace Walpole's Gothic novel or perhaps the Italian port town. Unlike other working plantations, Otranto served as Garden's rural retreat—a sanctuary where this botanical genius could indulge his passion for indigenous Carolina flora.

Imagine, dear readers, a maze of serpentine paths winding through gardens showcasing native splendors!

From the elevated position of his villa, Garden commanded views of what he called "diversified grounds" combining "hill & dale" with "a fine winding river." The mansion itself was modest but positioned with theatrical precision atop a hill, shaded by towering tulip trees reaching eighty feet toward the heavens.

While Garden's contemporaries fussed over imported European specimens, he boldly championed native Carolina plants, declaring his intention to demonstrate "what a Carolina situation ornamented with only the natural productions of the Country can arrive at."

His gardens burst with Magnolia tripetala, Magnolia Gordonia, and what he called "the Proudest of the Vegetable kingdom" – the Magnolia altissima, which he boasted challenged "both Indies in the rich Verdure of its foliage and Excelling Every Vegetable in the Magnitude and grandeur of its flowers."

Garden allowed climbing azaleas and flowering vines—scarlet woodbine, yellow jessamine, and wisteria—to weave through cypress branches creating "one continu'd garland" that "binds the grove." The fragrant borders gave "a lovely glow to the gardens of Otranto that your cold bleak gardens of Albion [England] can never see or produce."

Despite his brilliance in botanical matters, Garden was, by all accounts, a difficult, headstrong man. When the Revolutionary War erupted, Garden's loyalist sympathies cost him everything. His property was confiscated, and he was banished from his beloved Carolina. A Scottish-American physician by training, Garden had discovered the Congo eel and numerous snakes and herbs during his time in America—contributions that earned him the vice presidency of the Royal Society after his return to England.

Most heartbreaking of all was the rejection of his granddaughter, ironically named Gardenia in his honor. Even this touching tribute could not soften the doctor's heart. He refused to see the child, holding fast to his grudge against her father—Garden's only son—who had committed the unforgivable sin of fighting against the British!

Perhaps the most touching tribute to Garden's vision came from his friend and fellow exile, George Ogilvie, who in his 1791 poem "Carolina; or, The Planter" immortalized Otranto as the ideal embodiment of the English natural landscape garden.

Forced to flee America himself, Ogilvie returned to his unfinished poem in 1789, adding a final tribute to Garden's lost paradise:

The Muse
Sees ev'ry winding Valley wave with corn,
Sees purple Vineyards ev'ry hill adorn;
Sees yonder Marsh, with useless reeds 'erspread,
Give to a thousand looms the flaxen thread;
And Hemp, from many a now neglected field,
Its sinewy bark to future Navies yield.
Nor shall Tobacco balk the Planter's hope,
Who seeks its fragrance on th'irriguous slope.
Around each field she sees the Mulb'ry grow,
Or unctuous Olive from the frugal row;
Beholds our hills the precious Thea bear,
And all the crops of Asia flourish here.

As we tend our own gardens today, let us remember Alexander Garden—not just for the fragrant flower that bears his name through botanical politics, but for his visionary championing of native plants and his creation of an American paradise lost to time and revolution.