Tag: pineapples

The Scott brothers

Two brothers, probably Scots and both pineapple specialists, were working in Chiswick from about 1740. James Scott ran a nursery at Turnham Green while Henry was Lord Burlington’s gardener at Chiswick House until he set himself up as a gardener in Weybridge in the 1750s.

James Scott was running the Chiswick Nursery at Turnham Green from about 1740.  Henry Scott, his brother, was gardener to Lord Burlington at Chiswick House by 1738; in that year he travelled north to Burlington’s estate at Londesborough, to visit the gardener there, Thomas Knowlton (1692-1781) whose wife had recently died.

The extract from Milne’s Land Use Map, published in 1800, shows  the grounds of Chiswick House as ‘Chiswick Gardens’ while James Scott’s Chiswick Nursery occupied the L-shaped plot coloured peach in the north-east quarter of the map – they were only a short stroll apart.

These two men with Chiswick connections became known for their expertise in growing pineapples. John H Harvey thought the two brothers were Scots though I have not yet traced records of their birth or family connections. However, James’ skills were particularly valued by James Justice, a Scots horticulturist. In his The Scots gardiners director (1754) Justice recommended Scott’s cauliflower seeds and recorded that Scott supplied him with a pineapple stove and pineapple plants shipped from Chiswick to Edinburgh: “Mr James Scott at Turnham Green London will serve them as well and as cheap as any person”. Additional expertise in pineapples may have come through Henry’s connection with Thomas Knowlton, for this older man was also a specialist in cultivating these prized fruits.

James Scott’s fashionable advertisement, with its sumptuous border of fruits and exotic plants, makes clear that Pineapples were his speciality.

“Plants and Fruit of Ananas or Pine Apple
NB The Plants may be convey’d in health and ripe Fruit in perfection, any Journey of Sixteen Days.”

and, stressing his inventiveness and cost-effectiveness, he states that he

“directs Building Stoves, Walls & Frames for raising Ananas in any pt of Great Britain or Ireland, of materials cheapest in each respective place, & adapted for any sort of Fuel that is most plentiful. Likewise the most conven[ien]t and least expensive Fire Walls for Forcing Grapes, Apricocks, Cherrys, &c and new invented Fire Walls to raise early Melons & Cucumbers, free from the Watery quality they have in wet Seasons, & cheaper than common Frameing”.

Blanche Henrey’s book on Knowlton, No Ordinary Gardener (1986) includes extracts from a number of his letters, many written to gardening friends. They help us appreciate how highly prized pineapples were in 18th century England. Knowlton’s letters show that Lord Burlington valued them highly and sometimes had them sent as special gifts to friends. On 3 October 1738 Knowlton wrote to Samuel Brewer

“his L[or]dship being heare I have cutt a Large nr of pineaples some of them very Large & fine & have still a considerable n[umbe]r to spare to sarve his taible he talks of staying till Xmas before he will seat forward for London.”

He went on to mention projects for new heated “stoves” or greenhouses for pineapples being built at Raby Castle and at Chatsworth and also one in Lincolnshire where “his man”, John, had gone to live, “so that the pine aples will gain very much in this Island in a few yeares time”.

In another letter to Brewer, on 8 December 1742, Knowlton wrote

“I have abundance of fine frut wch is a grat Pleasure to his L[or]dshipe & creaditt to me . . . I am apt to belive my new pine aple fram[e] or Bead beats all that ever I see yett for that purpose and is much less Exspense than any thought of . . .”

His letters often accompany plants and seeds which he was exchanging with friends. He often praised fellow gardeners for their achievements. For  example, on 23 July 1754 he added a postscript to a letter to Richard Richardson saying

“this days post brought me a Lettr from Mr James Scot Turnham green & tells me he has published a cutt of the Sarracen or Side Sadle flower wch grew in his garden cullour 2s plain 1 shilling if you have a mind to have it of any Body in yr parts will ordr you on[e] as he desires me to promote the sail of it he says he exspects the mignificant nymphea next Xmas by a shipe from north america if you remember I told you of it he had seeds but not on[e] come up”.

The print of Sarracena purpurea was drawn by Timothy Lewis and engraved by Francis Vivares.  The plant is shown as it appeared in his garden “at The Pinery Turnham green the 18 April 1754”.  Scott clearly knew Knowlton well enough to ask him to help encourage sales of the print; Knowlton was well aware of the rare plants Scott was trying to cultivate and his past successes and failures.

Later in the same year both Scotts are mentioned in another letter when on 5 November Knowlton wrote to William Stonehouse, gardener to Richard Richardson. He not only mentioned James’ print of Sarracena but also the fact that Henry had

“published a fine print of Knowledge and Lab[ou]r assisted by the 4 Elements presenting the gard[ene]r with the fruits of the hotest Climates Extreemly well done in ye maner of a place bill & is the neatest thing of the Kind I have seen he sent me on[e] down”.

Henry Scott’s trade card (British Museum, D,2.333)

Henry’s beautiful trade card, of which there are several copies in the British Museum’s collection, has text in English and French, headed “Pine Apples, raised and sold by Henry Scott, Gardener at Weybridge at Surrey, where Persons may be supplied with ripest Fruit during their Season and Plants of all Sizes sold at the Lowest Price”. He makes a virtue of the good transport links between London and Weybridge – the Chertsey coach daily and the Weybridge boats twice a week – for conveying both plants and fruit to customers. His business embraces the same sort of contracting that James was offering along with the sale of plants and as the image makes clear, the sale of the greatly prized pineapples! The handsome trade card was published in October 1754; the design was by Samuel Wale and the engraving again by Vivares. A pineapple is shown growing in a pot in the foreground while the gardener – is this a portrait of Henry Scott himself? – holds one aloft.

So for a few years, Henry was well established at Weybridge, with his wife and their daughter Martha. However, Martin Hopkinson has referred me to a newspaper reference about the sale of Henry’s stock in trade in Weybridge in March 1761 (The Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer 5-7 March 1761). The edition of the same newspaper for 11-13 November 1760‚ reported that on the previous Tuesday Henry Scott had been arrested for stabbing James Buck of Weybridge and John Gale, the Constable of Weybridge, and was committed to the New Gaol in Southwark. At the time of the sale Henry must have still been in prison; The London Evening Post of 2-4 April 1761 reported that his trial at the Kingston Assizes had been postponed as the Constable was still very ill and more likely to die than recover. We have so far failed to find a record of his trial or its outcome.

It has not so far been possible to trace a will for either of the Scott brothers. James’ burial is recorded in 1770 in the registers of St Nicholas Church, Chiswick with a note that he was buried inside the church; a Mrs Scott, probably his wife, was buried in 1758, also in the church. This suggests that they were of some standing in the parish.

Find out about the pots in which pineapples were served at table on the Spode History Blog

See also Martin Hopkinson “Gardeners’ Trade Cards by William Kilburn and Francois Vivares”, Print Quarterly XXXV, 2018, 4

The Chiswick Nursery: Scott, Williams, Glendinning

The Chiswick nursery where later Thornton Road was built, was established by James Scott in the 1740s and managed by, amongst others, Richard Williams (of Williams Pear fame) and Robert Glendinning.

The L-shaped 8-acre plot, shown shaded in peach on Milne’s Land Use Map of 1800, was cultivated by a series of important 18th and 19th century gardeners. Today the Victorian houses of Thornton and Mayfield Avenues run across the land.

The Chiswick Nursery was established in about 1740 by James Scott,and became famous for its pineapples, a great test of the nurseryman’s skill. Scott supplied the first pineapples to be fruited in Scotland from here. His ‘stoves’ or heated greenhouses for raising pineapples were highly recommended as were his cauliflower seeds.


Scott’s elegant trade card advertises his famous pineapples and also the stoves, fire walls and frames he could supply for forcing fruit. Scott died in 1770 and his nursery passed into other hands; after 1776 Roberson and Hodson (or Hudson) were running it, though no information has been traced about their garden work.

By 1784 Richard Williams was running it; he was to remain for over forty years. He specialised in heathers and introduced many new plants from the Cape of Good Hope, from Australia and America.

He  propagated the Salopian Pippin, an apple which may have originated on his Shropshire estate at Hadnoll. This was commended by Hugh Ronalds, the Brentford nurseryman, in his book, Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis, published in 1832.

Williams pear from a print which accompanied Hooker’s presentation of the fruit to the RHS, 1816

Williams is known today because he propagated the Williams Pear. He developed a sapling obtained from a Berkshire schoolmaster to a quality and reliability that saw William Hooker recommend it to a meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1816. Hooker called it the Williams Bon Chretien.
The quality and reliability of this variety saw it increasingly cultivated in England and across the world. It is still widely grown and is also known in America as the Bartlett Pear. The eau de vie, Poire William, produced mainly in Alsace, and the similar liqueur from the former Yugoslavia, viljamovka, still use Mr Williams’ name and are frequently produced with a pear grown inside the bottle.

The history of the nursery is obscure for a few years after Williams’ death in 1830. The detail in the newspaper advertisement shown here suggests that the nursery had become predominantly a fruit-growing ground.

The newscutting is preserved in a scrap book in Chiswick Local Studies collection and is annotated with the date of 1837. A little research by Simon Francis has pinned it down to the Morning Chronicle where it was also advertised on the day before the sale. A John Graham seems to have been at the nursery from 1836 until Robert Glendinning took it over in 1843, so it seems odd that the plants should have been sold off so soon after he took over when the nursery was to continue, unless, perhaps, the executors had debts to pay. It is possible, however, that having arranged to take over the land, he had to bid separately for the stock on the ground.

Glendinning was born in Lanark in 1805 and had been working on the estate at Bicton in the West Country in the 1830s. He was already an experienced gardener when he took on the Chiswick Nursery. He re-organised his Chiswick Nursery and installed new hothouses. He was sufficiently confident about its future to issue a long advertisement in The Gardeners’ Chronicle in December 1843 announcing the improvements and seeking business.

Glendinning’s horticultural interests were wide-ranging. He grew heathers and had a high reputation for conifers and fruit trees. He  was an active member of the Horticultural Society of London whose gardens in Chiswick were about 10 minutes’ walk from his nursery. His Practical Hints on the Culture of Pineapples was published in 1839 and he donated a copy to the library at the Horticultural Society’s Chiswick gardens where he was commissioned to redesign the arboretum. Amongst many articles which he wrote for the Journal of the Horticultural Society was one on transplanting large trees in 1849, and he published The Pinetum, a list of conifers, 10 years later. Many other articles followed and he won numerous RHS awards. Robert Fortune’s third expedition to China supplied him with imported plants including rhododendrons.

By the time of his death in 1862 Glendinning had become so firmly established locally that he was one of the Chiswick Improvement Commissioners. His wife and sons continued the business for nine years after he died until it was taken over by Henry Ewen, Nurseryman and Florist. The 1881 Census lists The Ewen family, and describes Mr Ewen as employing 5 men and 34 boys. The 25″ OS map of about 1870 shows the extensive garden grounds but they were to become a building site as Chiswick was absorbed into London’s western suburbs.

updated 16 August 2023