The Ingenious Mr Fairchild: The Forgotten Father of the Flower Garden

by Michael Leapman

By the early eighteenth century, botanists were inching towards the shocking truth that plants had male and female organs and reproduced sexually.The first person to realize the practical implications of this was Thomas Fairchild, a London nurseryman, and celebrated author of The City Gardener.By transferring the pollen of a sweet william into the pistil of a carnation, he created a new plant that became known as Fairchild's mule.The first man-made hybrid in Europe, it heralded the thousands of new varieties available to gardeners today.This primitive form of genetic engineering aroused as much of a storm as genetically modified plants provoke today.As the scientific and religious debate raged, satirists wrote lewd verses about sex in the flowerbeds and railed against meddling with God's design. Michael Leapman, a brilliant horticultural writer, has unearthed fascinating and colorful detail about the life and times of Thomas Fairchild, a troubled, gentle soul whose pioneering work changed the course of horticulture and paved the way for the growth of gardening as a cultural obsession. AUTHORBIO: Michael Leapman is an award-winning journalist who writes on gardening and other topics for several newspapers and magazines, including The Economist, The Garden, and Gardens Illustrated.He is a former editor of The Times Diary and was also the paper's New York correspondent.An authority on London, he has written and edited a number of books about the city including London's River and Eyewitness Guide to London.His first book, One Man and His Plot, was about the allotment in Brixton, South London, which he and his wife Olga still cultivate.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with trying to write a full-scale biography of Thomas Fairchild is that very little is known about him. Leapman has had to result to a lot of 'repetition and deviation' to make this book long enough - some of it is relevant, as he describes the culture and times in which Fairchild was living, but an awful lot of it feels like it is just there to make the book longer.

For example, when Fairchild is dying, an aloe blooming in a nearby garden attracted many visitors, and Leapman devotes several pages to this on the basis that 'no doubt' Fairchild was aware of all the people passing his house and that he 'must have been disturbed' by them. Because Fairchild left some money in his will to pay for an annual sermon (a common practice in his time), Leapman devotes 23 pages to discussing this, including listing all the people who have preached the sermons in the past two and a half centuries! The final chapter is an enthusiastic recommendation for modern day genetic modification, which, while 'connected' to Fairchild's hybridization work, seems a bizarre end to the book and more of an excuse for the author to promote his own beliefs than a helpful addition to the story.

If you can borrow a copy of this, then it's worth reading, but if you are buying, I'd say you are better off finding a book that includes a chapter on Fairchild, and skipping all the needless verbiage.

[Amanda Witt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting history and story of the man who experimented with what is now called hybridisation of plants.

[Wilma · Rating 1 out of 5]

This author took on writing a biography without any knowledge of this man. All was taken from other peoples books, letters, history. A pretty boring book.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given as a present...and a fascinating read.