The Seven Founding Fathers of the RHS
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is the world’s leading gardening charity. Its aim is to enrich everyone’s life through plants, and to make the UK a greener and more beautiful place. The Society currently has five national gardens, through which it promotes a love of gardening.
The RHS was founded by seven remarkable men in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London.
The creation of a British horticultural society was suggested by John Wedgwood (son of Josiah Wedgwood) in 1800. His aims were fairly modest: he wanted to hold regular meetings, allowing the society's members the opportunity to present papers on their horticultural activities and discoveries, to encourage discussion of them, and to publish the results. The society would also award prizes for gardening achievements.
Wedgwood discussed the idea with his friends, but it was four years before the first meeting, of seven men, took place, on 7 March 1804 at Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly, London. Wedgwood was chairman; also present were William Townsend Aiton (successor to his father, William Aiton, as Superintendent of Kew Gardens), Sir Joseph Banks (President of the Royal Society), James Dickson (a nurseryman), William Forsyth (Superintendent of the gardens of St. James's Palace and Kensington Palace), Charles Francis Greville (a Lord of the Admiralty) and Richard Anthony Salisbury, who became the Secretary of the new society.
Banks proposed his friend Thomas Andrew Knight for membership. The proposal was accepted, despite Knight's ongoing feud with Forsyth over a plaster for healing tree wounds which Forsyth was developing. Knight was president of the society from 1811 to 1838, and developed the society's aims and objectives to include a programme of practical research into fruit-breeding.
Early activities included the development of medals, a library, and gardens. The prototype of the Society's popular flower shows today began in the late 1820s, with a series of floral fetes held at the Duke of Devonshire's estate in Chiswick.
Prince Albert was the President of the Horticultural Society of London, when, in 1861, he created a new charter for the organisation - now to be called The Royal Horticultural Society. A new garden in Kensington was also secured at this time, which remained its headquarters until 1888. Royal support helped increase membership.
In 1903, Sir Thomas Hanbury purchased the garden of a former Society council member, George Fergusson Wilson, at Wisley, Surrey, and presented it to the Society as a new experimental garden. Wisley remained the Society's only garden for 80 years.
Further reading
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