It is not now uncommon to see mature trees hydraulically uprooted and transported over great distances and replanted. It was somewhat revolutionary in 1830; large crowds gathered to witness the curiosity and the local papers reported the ‘experiment of a novel and extraordinary description’, and Paxton’s ‘ingenious contrivance’ in detail. Paxton had undoubtedly moved fairly large trees before in his responsibilities as the Duke’s forester and in the formation of the pinetum. A voracious reader on all subjects horticultural, he would have added to his own practical knowledge the systems of others. Only a year later he would include an article in his new magazine The Horticultural Register recommending a method of earth excavation in order to leave a large root-ball intact. Later still, in the first volume of another of his own magazines, The Magazine of Botany, he would return to this favourite theme with a full description of how to remove large trees, accompanied by clear diagrams to illustrate root-ball preservation, the use of cross-levers in lifting, and replanting techniques. For the Duke, the weeping ash was a high point of the year and, such was the widespread interest in its removal, that he received a vexatious eight-page letter from Sir Henry Steuart, author of a treatise on practical planting. Steuart warned him that he should have taken his advice, for the tree would surely not survive transplantation so late in the year. He added an amusing postscript ‘I know that gardeners are, as well as poets rather an “irritable race”, I should take the liberty to advise … that this letter be not communicated to Mr Paxton.’ The Duke’s reply was restrained. ‘Mr Paxton, my woodman, who has long been in the habit of moving large trees has no doubt of the success … of the experiment.’ He could have added that Paxton was the least ‘irritable’ man in his employment.
By 1830, the first lawnmower was patented,* an early indication that gardening was to become one of the greatest of all middle-class English hobbies. The kitchen garden at Chatsworth held 22 hothouses and numerous forcing pits. In the pleasure ground, new flower gardens framed the house and plants, in particular, rose to prominence. With new glasshouses to protect them, and a man fit to cultivate them, it became expedient to augment the collection by swapping and purchasing plants and seeds – and these begin to be listed in the garden accounts. At home, Sarah was pregnant again with their third child.
Outside their enclosed world, there was revolution in France and political unease in Britain. The word ‘scientist’ was coined; invention and experimentation was creating a new world of possibility. In September 1830, Stephenson’s Rocket raced along its tracks at 16m.p.h. from Liverpool to Manchester carrying passengers as well as freight for the first time, promising a revolution in travel particularly for the expanding urban populations.
Paxton was poised to burst into action in the two most fruitful and exciting decades of his life, years where it hardly seemed possible for him to draw breath for new ideas and experiments.
* The fashion for these odd shaped evergreen trees was fed by the publication, in 1831, of a complete listing of all known conifers in cultivation by Charles Lawson. In 1838 he followed this with the publication of Pinetum Britannicum. By the end of the nineteenth century, it is estimated that over 250 different species of pines were available.
* By Edwin Budding. Illustrated in the Gardener’s Chronicle of that year. Uncatalogued material in the Chatsworth Collection shows that a Ferrabee mower was purchased in 1833. At an early stage Ferrabee shared rights in the mower with patentee Budding and licensed Ransomes of Ipswich to make them.
‘I was just going to write and tell you how much pleased I was by the amount of your prizes in the Sheffield paper, when I got your dismal letter about the frost … I am coming to look at what is left on 1 June. Please tell Mrs Gregory.’ So wrote the Duke to Paxton on 14 May 1831. The frost had also destroyed the prize dahlias at Chiswick, demolished the magnolia leaves and ruined the blossom and vegetables. If this was not the first letter from the Duke to Paxton, it is the earliest to have survived, and it points at the priority now given by the Duke to all things horticultural. From this time, his diaries become peppered with references to plants and trees seen and coveted, to visits to the famous nurseries in and around London, and to the efforts and results of other gardeners at many of England’s great estates and smaller private gardens.
If the improvements at Chatsworth were intended to provide a grand display case for his passionately collected works of art, literature and sculpture, the garden and grounds soon became an equal obsession. Paxton was beginning to fashion a pattern of new walks through the woods, as well as paths and slopes between the orangery and the flower garden near the house. His enthusiasm was infectious to the beauty-loving aristocrat and the gardener’s early successes and obvious ability began to fire the Duke’s somewhat competitive and acquisitive nature. He started to study botanical books avidly, swept up in a rising intoxication for all things rare and ornamental.
Together, the Duke and his gardener would walk the woods and strike out on to the moors above the house, in a boyish and delightful search for new springs that could be diverted to feed the waterworks. The Duke visited gardens in Canterbury in September, noting some tulip trees which must be had for Chatsworth. When he arrived back, he visited the kitchen garden and saw all Paxton’s rarities. He was in raptures. Chatsworth had become, quite simply, ‘delicious’, his enjoyment of it filling the pages of his diary and his letters. Lady Newburgh, a Derbyshire neighbour, wrote to Blanche that ‘Chatsworth is getting every day more beautiful inside and out, you will hardly know it again, so much has been done.’
From the beginning of the year, across the country there was almost no talk but of ‘the Bill’. The first reading of the Great Reform Bill – introduced by the Whigs and designed to begin a realignment of power through the abolition of rotten boroughs and the extension of the vote to the prospering middle classes and male householders – was heard in the Lords at the end of September. It had a rough ride and on 8 October it was rejected. There were riots in Derby, Bristol and in manufacturing towns across England. In December, on its second reading, it was thrown out again by a majority of 160. Like its continental cousins, Britain seemed on the verge of potential revolution and the army were put on alert.
The Liberal Duke was alarmed and distressed – and he went shopping. Then he wrote jubilantly to Paxton: ‘I have bought you the Araucaria excelsa!’ He fussed about the safe arrival of the monkey puzzle, dreading delay on the canals by frost. He also sent heaths, and signalled his great desire for a glorious red euphorbia, for an amaryllis, for Barringtonia and for Eucalyptus desfoliata, once the stoves in which they could be cultivated had been completed.
If the urban population was disaffected and angry, in the enclosed and rarefied country air of the Chatsworth estate, Paxton had different distractions. His second daughter was born in April and named after the Duke’s niece, Blanche. He was also working on plans to launch a new gardening magazine, The Horticultural Register and General Magazine, jointly edited with Joseph Harrison, the gardener to Lord Wharncliffe at Wortley Hall near Sheffield. The first issue, published in July, thrust Paxton into the public arena. He was just short of his 28th birthday.
Plantsmen, eager for information on new plants and their cultivation, were already well served by the early Botanical Magazine and its rival the Botanical Register. The Horticultural Society issued its Transactions and nurseries their catalogues, including Loddiges’ Botanical Cabinet. All these contained coloured plates of foreign varieties, but they were expensive, and hardly suited to the ‘practical’ gardener. The most extensive horticultural journalist of his day was John Claudius Loudon. The Gardener’s Magazine included detailed reports of the activities of the societies, of nurseries and gardens visited, of recently published books and periodicals as well as articles on all aspects of the gardener’s responsibilities. Most radical were Loudon’s own articles, advocating novel and revolutionary ideas such as national schooling, adult education and green belts around cities.
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