Unearthed: Jane and John Loudon

Author and illustrator Jane Loudon was an important example of how women contributed to the development of writing about horticulture and the natural world. She published a celebrated series of innovative books that helped to popularise an emerging interest in gardening and horticulture among middle-class women in the mid-nineteenth century. 

Born Jane Webb in Birmingham, her family’s affluent background enabled her to travel widely and gain first-hand experience of other cultures. In 1830 she married John Claudius Loudon, a noted Scottish botanist, garden designer and author. He was the founding editor of The Gardeners’ Magazine and it was through helping her husband she realised that there was a gap in the market for easy to understand gardening manuals for ladies like herself.

John Claudius Loudon amassed an extensive list of inventions, terminologies and published numerous books and cumulated the first encyclopaedia of gardening.  His relationship with his wife Jane Webb, author and writer of early science fiction novels was not only domestic but professional. Loudon and Webb collaborated throughout their marriage, Webb not only writing her own gardening books but assisting and editing Loudon’s books.

Here is the preface written by his wife for the 1850 edition of The Villa Gardner.  This book was intended for the amateur gardener and as specified, ladies.  Loudon commended his life’s work to Webb knowing that she would expand on his previous findings in botanicals and horticultural matters.

Loudon devised and edited the first Gardner’s Magazine in 1826, a horticulture magazine offering a guide and understanding for amateur gardeners who sought enjoyment from plants and gardening.

It became a source of communication bringing gardeners around the country together to communicate and exchange their proficiencies and unfamiliarity’s in gardening.  It is believed, to be Loudon’s personal preferred periodical out of all his publications.

The magazine ceased in 1844 one year after his death.

In 1816 John Claudius Loudon designed a wrought-iron glazing bar. This innovation of using a thinner flexible bar that would curve the roof during construction and create a dome shape. In 1817 he published his idea in the form of sketches of Curvilinear hothouses.

Unfortunately, Loudon sold the idea for the glazing bar to Messrs W. and D. Bailey prematurely.  An example of Loudon’s idea of the wrought iron glazing bar can still be seen at Felton Park Greenhouse, Felton Park, Felton, Northumberland.

Check out the other blogs in this series:

Unearthed: Plants as medicine

Unearthed: Gardening to feed

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