DAWN OF LANDSCAPE GARDENING 
235 
list of the members, given at the end of the preface of the work 
published by them, the year after Fairchild’s death. 1 This 
book is one of great interest. Only one part was published, 
others were to follow if the first met sufficient encouragement, 
and that this was not so is much to be regretted. The following 
gardeners were the joint authors : 
Thomas Fairchild. 
Robert Furber. 
John Alston. 
Obadiah Lowe. 
Philip Miller. 
John Thompson. 
Christopher Gray. 
Francis Hunt. 
Samuel Driver. 
Moses James. 
George Singleton. 
Thomas Bickerstaff. 
William Hood. 
Richard Cole. 
William Welstead. 
Benjamin Whitmill. 
Samuel Hunt. 
John James. 
Stephen Bacon. 
William Spencer. 
Most of these men were nursery-gardeners, and all lived 
in London or the suburbs : Furber at Kensington ; Alston, 
Miller, and Thompson at Chelsea; Lowe and Cole in Batter¬ 
sea ; Fairchild, Whitmill, and Bacon at Hoxton ; Francis and 
Samuel Hunt at Putney ; Gray at Fulham ; 2 James in Lambeth ; 
George Singleton at the Neat Houses ; and William Hood at 
the Wheatsheaf near Hyde Park Corner. Every month, for 
five or six years, this Society met at Newhall’s Coffee-house in 
Chelsea, or other convenient place near. Each member 
brought some plants of his own growing, which were discussed 
by the assembled gardeners. The names and descriptions 
were then carefully registered. At the end of five or six years 
they decided to have all the plants they had catalogued 
“ drawn and painted by an able hand.” For this purpose 
they engaged the services of Jacob van Huysum ; a good 
artist, and brother of the famous Dutch flower painter. They 
got together a large collection of drawings, and finally agreed 
to publish them. The first part only, containing hardy shrubs, 
appeared. It was to have been followed by other volumes. 
1 Catalogus Plantarum : A Catalogue of Trees, Shrubs, etc., for Sale in 
the Gardens near London, by a Society of Gardeners, 1730. The British 
Museum copy is under Fairchild’s name, 452, h. 2. 
2 The Magnolia grandiftora was first planted in Gray’s garden. See 
Johnson’s History of English Gardening, p. 202. 
