In the early 1730s, a new subscription craze transformed Georgian Britain. Every year, for five guineas, “Bartram’s box” would delight plant collectors and gardeners with seeds from among a hundred different North American species. The supply chain had a Pennsylvanian Quaker, John Bartram, at one end and another Quaker, English merchant Peter Collinson, at the other.
The overpriced phlox and rudbeckia we now buy from garden centres in seasonal attempts to brighten up our outdoor spaces, the rhododendrons and magnolias that arrest our attention across the drabbest of streets, were all introduced to England thanks to their initiative. Collinson and Bartram’s subscriber list included dukes and earls who vied with each other to beautify their estates, but the pair were equally well connected beyond the movers and shakers of high society. Collinson was a member of the Royal Society and exchanged letters with the collector Hans Sloane and the botanist Carl Linnaeus. Bartram would later become one of the founding members of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, alongside Benjamin Franklin. When the combination of that impeccable social and intellectual network got Bartram an appointment as botanist to King George III in 1765, his plants would also find a home in the Royal Gardens at Kew.
