Bartram's Garden 
On the west bank of the Schuylkill River, not far from 
where it runs into the Delaware, lies Bartram's Garden. A 
garden that was planted more than a hundred and seventy years 
ago and had not its like in the New World. 
The situation is beautiful, and as one's mind goes back to 
those long by-gone days, one must needs see the virgin growth 
of field and forest and the canoes of the Indian steal from the 
opposite bank where now tall factory chimneys stand out against 
the rising sun. The gigantic black oil tanks of Point Breeze 
squat on the meadows which John Bartram reclaimed from 
swamps, • and petroleum goes forth to all lands from the spot 
whence ships carried his boxes of seeds and specimens to the 
King. As his letters quaintly tell, "There is some formality to 
deliver a King 's box. ' ' 
"It is no little deed to make a garden, but to make a garden 
in a wilderness, to make the wilderness tributary to it and it 
tributary to the great centres of learning and thought on another 
continent, that is a great deed." John Bartram was born near 
Darby, Philadelphia, in 1699 and set about establishing his 
Botanic Garden in 1730, when the Alleghenies were mapped as 
the "Endless Mountains." He tells, "that he never received 
any other education than hardly reading and writing" and that 
he had been employed many years in tilling the earth when his 
mind awakened to an impulse to study the plants his plough was. 
turning under. "I hired a man to plow for me. I went to 
Philadelphia. I ingenuously told the bookseller my errand and 
he provided me with such books as he thought best and a Latin 
grammar. ' ' A neighboring schoolmaster taught him in three 
months enough Latin to understand Linnaeus, with whom he 
afterwards corresponded. A letter from Linnaeus dated 1750, 
took two years to reach him. John Bartram had no automobile 
and yet what travels ! All his life there was peril almost from 
the time he left his door. We see him collecting in the "Katt- 
skills, " in Maryland, Virginia and "York Government," 
exploring the S chivy lkill and Delaware to their sources and send- 
ing the Rhododendrons to his friend Peter Collinson in London. 
Peter writes of "the fine Laurels or Chamaerhodoclendros, their 
seed is the worst sort of seed to send over for keeping, as prithee 
go at a proper season and load a pair of paniers or baskets with 
young plants and send half a dozen at a time for this seems to 
be the most elegant tree that has been discovered in your 
province, ' ' and again ' ' Sir Hans Sloane very much desires some 
seed of that fine Laurel thee discovered beyond the Blue 
Mountains" and again, "The Great Rhododendron has been 
glorious beyond expression." Sir Hans Sloane is the founder 
of the British Museum and in 1743 sent him a Silver Cup and 
