Lee and Kennedy

Fuchsia magellanica introduced to commerce by Lee and Kennedy in 1788 for one guinea a plant

Lee and Kennedy were prominent nurserymen in three generations at The Vineyard, in Hammersmith, west of London.^[1]

"For many years," wrote John Claudius Loudon in 1854^[2] "this nursery was deservedly considered the first in the world." The partnership was originated with a nurseryman, Lewis Kennedy (c1721 — 1782), who was gardener to Lord Bolton at Chiswick and had the nursery called "The Vineyard" at Hammersmith.^[3] Kennedy went into partnership about 1745 with James Lee (Selkirk, 1715 — 25 July 1795), the Scottish gardener, who having apprenticed with Philip Miller at the Chelsea Physic Garden^[4] was gardener to the Duke of Somerset at Syon House, nearby, and to Lord Islay, later the third Duke of Argyll at Whitton Park;^[5] the Duke of Argyll was an enthusiastic gardener, and he imported large numbers of exotic species of plants and trees for his estate.

Lee's botanical interest

Lee was a correspondent with Linnaeus, through the connection with the Chelsea Physic Garden; he compiled an introduction to the Linnaean system, An Introduction to Botany, published in 1760,^[6] which passed through five editions. In 1774 the partners issued a Catalogue of plants and seeds: sold by Kennedy and Lee, nurserymen. They were in correspondence with plant collectors in the Americas and with Francis Masson and others at the Cape of Good Hope, whence hardy and half-hardy plants and seeds were coming to be tested in English gardens and hothouses.^[7] Lee was succeeded in the venture by his son, also James Lee (1754 — 1824).

Suppliers to Empress Josephine at Malmaison

According to Étienne Pierre Ventenat^[8] who named the Australian woody scrambler Kennedia to honour Kennedy, they supplied roses for the Empress Josephine at Malmaison during the lull in the Napoleonic Wars provided by the Peace of Amiens, 1802-03. Josephine's head gardener at Malmaison, Howatson, was English, but Alice M. Coats suggests that it was probably the well-established Scottish gardener and landscape designer, Thomas Blaikie, who put her in touch with Messrs Lee and Kennedy; her relation with this firm is one of the curiosities of garden history, according to Coats.^[9] By 1803 the Empress had run up an outstanding bill with them of £2600, and she cooperated with them in supporting a young plant hunter James Niven, at the Cape of Good Hope, in expectation of sharing boxes of seeds and plants of never-before-seen rarities of the scarcely botanized Cape Province, heaths, ixias, pelargoniums and others.^[10] With the revival of war between France and Britain, John Kennedy had a special permit to come and go to the Continent, advising the Empress on the collection she was forming at Malmaison. There were setbacks: in 1804 she complained in a letter that shipments of seeds had been captured and detained; but in 1811 her expenditures with the firm again amounted to £700.^[11] At Malmaison she installed a plant nursery, to ready her imports for distribution among French growers.

Notable clients

Towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Tsar Alexander I and three of his family visited England. Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna, young widow of the Duke of Oldenburg, made a point of visiting Lee and Kennedy's nursery grounds at Hammersmith, a magnet for any garden-minded visitor.^[12] The partnership also kept their name prominently before English garden-owners by regularly providing material for botanical illustrations in Curtis's Botanical Magazine.

Retirement

In 1818 Kennedy retired to Eltham, Kent, and his son John Kennedy (Hammersmith, 8 October 1759 — Eltham, 18 February 1842)^[13] continued in business with the younger James Lee under the established name. John, raised in the family business, was a frequent contributor to the first five volumes (1799—1803) of The Botanist's Repository, for which he wrote most of the notes accompanying the illustrations and less frequently thereafter. The editor was his son-in-law, H.C. Andrews.^[14] According to G.W. Johnson History of English Gardening (1829:301),^[15] John Kennedy was the actual writer of William Bridgwater Page, Page's Prodromus, as a General Nomenclature of All the Plants , Indigenous and Exotic, Cultivated in the Southampton Botanic Garden 1817. Page had been trained in the firm's nursery at Hammersmith and had married a daughter of John Kennedy and had moved to Southampton, where he set up in business himself.

The firm was subsequently carried on by the sons of James Lee, John (c1805 — 20 January 1899)^[16] and Charles Lee (8 February 1808 —2 September 1881), who carried the firm to end of the 19th century. From the end of the Napoleonic Wars Lee and Kennedy faced increasing competition in the field of hardy new introductions of shrubs and trees, from Loddiges at Hackney. Though the nursery grounds at Hammersmith were built over,^[17] and then those at Ealing, as London spread westwards, the last nurseries continued at Feltham.^[18]

Lewis Kennedy (1799-1877)who had worked at Malmaison and at Navarre, in Normandy, for the Empress Josephine, upon returning to England, designed numerous gardens in the new, formal style.[18]

In 1818 he was engaged as factor to the Drummond-Burrel Estates in Perthsire.^[19] In 1828 he added responsibility as agent, for the Willoughby de Eresby Estate at Grimsthorpe, in Lincolnshire and the Gwydir Estate, now in Gwynedd, the ownership of all of which was linked by marriage. He retired in 1868, by which time the estates had been brought into prosperous order.

Probably, his legacy most remarkable today is the formal flower garden at Drummond Castle. He worked on this scheme with the architect and landscape designer, Sir Charles Barry, who showed his watercolours of his scheme for remodelling Drummond castle itself, at the Royal Academy in 1828.

Notable introductions to commerce

Many tropical and sub-tropical plants for British greenhouses and hothouses were first introduced to commerce by Lee and Kennedy. The first China rose was imported by Lee and Kennedy, in 1787, and the next year the first fuchsia, as Fuchsia coccinea now known as F. magellanica, which Loudon remembered they had sold at first for a guinea a plant.^[20] In 1807 they introduced the dahlia to public cultivation.^[21] In 1818 they introduced the French idea of roses grown as standards.^[22]

References and notes