Discover our American Roots. Embrace our English Heritage*
The American Roots Exhibition opened in July 2005 and is located in a walled garden which was built for Charles Hamilton c.1756.
The display tells the story of the 18th Century craze for new and exciting plants (“exotics”) from outside the British Isles, particularly North America and shows how they were used to transform British gardening at Painshill Park and other 18th Century landscape gardens.
While demonstrating ways in which plants were displayed through the changing fashions of the 18th Century, and displaying historic gardening techniques such as a hotbed made with steaming fresh horse manure, the Exhibition focuses on the work of two gardening friends and business partners, John Bartram in Pennsylvania (1699-1777) and Peter Collinson in London (1694-1768).
Although other plant collectors had brought plants back to England from America before, Bartram and Collinson made it into a successful business, with boxes of tree and shrub seeds collected by Bartram in America being distributed by Collinson to wealthy British landowners who would pay five guineas (over £500 today) for a box of seeds.
Charles Hamilton was just such a subscriber and the range of woody plants available to him form the basis of ‘The John Bartram Heritage Collection’, a new kind of National Plant Collection which is held at Painshill through the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens (NCCPG).
Part of this Collection can be seen in the American Roots Exhibition, in many of the rectangular ‘slip beds’ and in the shady and cool North facing Border.
You can also see how plants and seeds were sent from America to England on sailing ships, always with the danger that bad weather, pirates or drunken sailors would destroy them or that rats onboard would eat the valuable cargo or make nests in the boxes!
As well as trees and shrubs, there are displays of herbaceous plants which came from North America to Britain two hundred years ago, including Venus Fly Traps and Pitcher Plants and the wild forms of many modern garden flowers, such as Sunflowers, Michaelmas Daisies and Phlox.
Although the main part of the Exhibition showcases North American plants, displays including the ‘Theatre of Plants’ and the ‘Hartwell Bed’, use plants from around the world, including China, South Africa and South America.
All the plants on show would have been available to British gardeners by the end of the 18th Century.
The Exhibition is open all year round with the main floral displays from April to October.
Many organisations have been associated with the creation of American Roots, including Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia, Chelsea Physic Garden, London, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
