Jane Powers

November 13, 2010
It was on this day that Jane Powers wrote an excellent botanical history piece for the Irish Times.
I especially loved this article because Jane correlated the number of bedding plants a person ordered during the middle of the 19th century and their corresponding personal wealth.
Here's what Jane wrote:

“In the heyday of bedding, the number of plants that a person displayed was a gauge of their wealth and status. 
According to the head gardener at the Rothschild estate at Halton in Buckinghamshire: 
it was 10,000 plants for a squire, 
20,000 plants for a baronet, 
30,000 plants for an earl, 
and 40,000 plants for a duke.”