In October 1730 he mentions being able to supply \u201ca new sort of pea that beats all I ever saw\u201d and says that he has been \u201cbussey\u201d building a green house \u201ca conveniency I very much wanted\u201d. He also comments on the weather: in 1730 \u201cWe have had vast plenty of all sorts of fruit this year and Exceeding Cheap\u201d but in 1731 \u201cthe dryness of the summer has made Standard peaches and Nectarines very scarce\u201d.<\/p>\n
The invoices list a variety of plants. In October 1729 Woodman sent 26 plums, 30 peaches and nectarines, 34 pears, 20 cherries, 15 apricots, 48 apples on paradise stocks, 108 gooseberries and currants, 6 berberies without stones, 200 raspberries and 400 strawberries. There were also flowering plants, damask roses, honeysuckles, anemones, polyanthus, mixed tulips, anemones, striped lilies, crown imperials, Persian iris, hepaticas, snowdrops and crocus and 50 auriculas.<\/p>\n
The following December he fulfilled a substantial order of seeds for nearly forty different kinds of vegetables and herbs, plus 100 asparagus roots, plus carnation layers, double white rocket and another 100 strawberries. Woodman wrote in January 1730 \u201cThe Cowcumber & Mellon seed you may depend on to be as good (as) any in England haveing saved it all myselfe\u201d, though later that year he advised Woolley to buy directly (and more cheaply) from Moses James of Lambeth, his usual seedsman.<\/p>\n
Late in 1731 he sent trees and hedging plants (200 6 ft-tall elms and 1500 hornbeams at 2 feet) with flowering shrubs and more fruit trees. In early 1732 he wrote to advise on the growing heights of the 1000 flowering shrubs he was supplying to help with the design of the planting, an approach which Nathaniel Swinden of New Brentford was to develop in The Beauties of Flora Displayed <\/em>in 1778. \u00a0He continued to send plants and seeds to the end of 1733.<\/p>\n By then another gardener, Stephen Switzer, had convinced Ellison that Woodman was fixing his prices in league with Woolley. The latter lost his post and after indignant letters from Woodman denying that he would ever do such a thing, Ellison placed the matter in the hands of a lawyer. Harvey considered Woodman\u2019s prices comparable to other contemporary nurserymen but no further letters survive to show how this was resolved. Switzer, however, succeeded in supplanting Woodman at Gateshead Park.<\/p>\n In 1755 the quality of the plants Woodman supplied was endorsed by Thomas Hitt, another distinguished gardener, in his book A Treatise of Fruit-Trees.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI must own I have received peach-trees and \u00a0\u00a0nectarines from Mr Henry Woodman of Strand on the Green in the county of Middlesex which I planted for the Reverend Mr Ewer of Bottisford near Belvoir Castle; all of them lived and some bore fruit the first year after planting, tho\u2019 they were brought above a hundred miles, and only packed up with straw and matts; they have been planted nine years and are now strong healthy trees.\u201d<\/p>\n Henry Woodman was a respected member of his community and served as a churchwarden in 1739\/40. When he died in 1758 he was buried at St Nicholas where the register records that they had fulfilled his request to be buried 12 feet deep. His will left over \u00a31,000 in bank annuities to be managed in trust by his widow, Eleanor, and by William Martin, a maltster and Strand on the Green neighbour.<\/p>\n Of Henry and Eleanor\u2019s five surviving children, four were under 21 when he made his will in June 1755. He added a codicil a year later, changing his bequests after his daughter, Elizabeth, had married and his son William, \u201cwho is now lame\u201d, had died. Worried about this lame son, Henry had provided for the legacies left to his other children to go to William should they die before him.<\/p>\n Eleanor Woodman was a strong, resourceful and reliable woman who was deeply involved in the nursery garden for many years more. Eleanor was executor to her brother William and witness to the will of her brother Nicholas. William Compton left a New Brentford freehold and his own house \u201cfronting the Thames\u201d on Strand on the Green, as well as nearby garden ground, to his nephew Henry Woodman Junior, on condition that he continued to work in co-partnership with his mother, but in the event she outlived him.<\/p>\n Eleanor\u2019s own will, proved in 1784, shows her astute financial management. She left \u00a32,000 in 3\u00bd% bank stock, twice the \u00a31,000 she had taken over in 1758 as executrix to her husband. She appointed two nephews-in- law as trustees, William Wake and Thomas Hearne, along with Charles Rubery of Sutton Court Farm. (Thomas Hearne senior, another local gardener, had married Eleanor\u2019s sister). She left her Strand on the Green house to her daughter Elizabeth Allen, revealing in passing that she has already moved out \u201cto Chiswick\u201d, with her servant Mary Hoskins. There are bequests to sons in law, grandsons and nieces and nephews, but it appears that apart from Elizabeth all her other children had died.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nurserygardeners.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/Picton-House.jpg\" "\\"Picton")
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