List of professional gardeners
This is a list of people noted for their contribution to gardening, either by working as gardeners or garden designers by occupation, or by commissioning famous gardens.
It does not include the innumerable people who count gardening among their hobbies.
Notable gardeners
The following are or were gardeners or garden designers by occupation. The list includes garden designers and landscape gardeners, who are involved chiefly in the design of gardens rather than the practical aspects of horticulture. It also includes experts noted for their writing or broadcasting on the subject.
- Luis Barragán, 20th century Mexican architect, planner of public gardens
- Lancelot "Capability" Brown, English landscape architect
- Carolus Clusius, pioneering botanist, 16th century scientific horticulturist
- Esther Dean, 20th century Australian pioneer of "no-dig gardening"
- Charlie Dimmock, English gardener and broadcaster
- Andrew Jackson Downing, 19th century American landscape designer
- Ian Hamilton Finlay, 20th century Scottish artist and gardener
- Bob Flowerdew, English organic gardener and broadcaster
- Pippa Greenwood, British plant pathologist and broadcaster
- C. Z. Guest, New York Post gardening columnist
- Robert Hart, 20th century British forest gardener
- Gertrude Jekyll, 20th century British garden designer
- William Kent, 18th century English landscape architect
- André Le Nôtre, 17th century French landscape architect
- Peter Joseph Lenné, 18th century Prussian landscape architect
- John Beverley Nichols, 20th century author of many gardening books
- Frederick Law Olmsted, 19th century designer, father of American landscape architecture
- Russell Page, 20th century British landscape architect
- Humphrey Repton, 18th century English landscape designer
- William Robinson, 20th century Irish practical gardener and journalist, who prompted the English cottage garden movement
- Geoffrey Smith, 20th century English gardener and broadcaster
- Theophrastus, 3rd century BC philosopher, author of Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants
- Percy Thrower, 20th century British gardener and broadcaster
- Alan Titchmarsh, 21st century English gardener and broadcaster
- John Tradescant the younger, 17th century botanist and gardener
- Edna Walling, 20th century Australian garden designer, writer and photographer
- Edith Wharton, 20th century American writer and landscape architect
- Albert Wilson, 20th century American botanist, landscape architect, author and broadcaster
People who have notably commissioned famous gardens
Other people whose primary profession was not gardening have made notable contributions to horticulture by planning or commissioning significant gardens.
- Michael Heseltine, 20th century British politician, noted arboriculturist
- Thomas Jefferson, 19th century American president, recognized for planning the grounds of the University of Virginia
- Lucullus, 1st century BC Roman general, noted for laying out the Gardens of Lucullus
- Solomon, Biblical king recorded as creating gardens, possibly near Etam
- Vita Sackville-West, English author, gardening columnist, creator of Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent
- William Shenstone, 18th century English poet, one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes
Fictional gardeners
- Pat, the White Rabbit's gardener in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Chance the Gardener in the film Being There, a simple American whose name is misheard as "Chauncey Gardiner" and accidentally becomes a Presidential advisor and candidate
- Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings, a hobbit, the servant and companion of Frodo Baggins, the Ring-bearer
- Tom and Barbara Good in The Good Life (1975 TV series), a middle-class English couple who try to become self-sufficient on the produce of their garden in Surbiton
- Souseiseki and Suiseiseki in the manga and anime Rozen Maiden, referred to as gardeners for their ability to tend not only plants but also the "soul trees" of humans
- The Chief Gardener of the Imperial Palace Grounds was a key figure on Trantor, the galactic capitol in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series -- a high functionary with a palatial office in the enormous Imperial complex and "an army of men and women under him."[1]
- There are multiple gardeners/botanists/herbologists in the Harry Potter series:
- Pomona Sprout, the former Herbology teacher
- Herbert Beery, the former Herbology teacher
- Frank Bryce, the Riddles' gardener
- Miranda Goshawk (in the film) and Phyllida Spore, two authors
- Elladora Ketteridge and Beaumont Majoribanks, discovered gillyweed, a fictional plant
- Hadrian Whittle, named after a real-life garden designer
See also