The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of Obsession

Join award-winning author Andrea Wulf in this beautifully illustrated talk telling the tale of a small group of 18th-century naturalists that made England a nation of gardeners. It’s the story of a garden revolution that began in America with the farmer John Bartram, who transformed the English landscape with the introduction of hundreds of American tress and shrubs.

The talk explores the botanical passions , obsessions, friendships and squabbles that knitted together the lives of six men that changed the world of gardening and botany – including John Bartram, the cantankerous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, and Joseph Banks,who joined James Cook’s Endeavour on the greatest voyage of discovery of modern times. Friends, rivals, enemies, their correspondence, collaborations and squabbles make for a riveting human drama, set against the backdrop of the emerging British empire and America’s magnificent forests. As botany and horticulture became a science, the garden became the Eden for everyman.

Andrea Wulf is the British Library Eccles Centre Writer in Residence.