A curator and historian by profession, since 2011, I have been engaging as a volunteer with the rich historical collections in the RBGE Archive. My focus has been previously uncatalogued collections of photographic images, all pre-1950 and mainly from glass-plate negatives.

Research has demonstrated how from the late 19^th century the Garden began to experiment with making consistent use of photography to support its scientific work. As the technology progressed, the photographic collection became an essential resource for daily reference for both botanical and cultivation purposes, ranking alongside the Herbarium and the collection of botanical illustrations.

I am also interested in the ways in which the invention and development of photography allowed a wide diversity of people, including artists, curators, gardeners, horticulturalists, landowners, and plant hunters, to record and communicate botanical subjects.

Previous Projects:

George Paxton Collection:

George Paxton (1850-1904) was a Kilmarnock brewer and keen amateur photographer with an expertise in portraying botanical subjects. His archive, donated by his grandson, includes over 800 glass plate negatives, with associated albums, prints, cameras and related equipment.

The principal subject matter is plants and trees - including the negatives used to produce the album Remarkable Trees in Ayrshire presented to RBGE in December 1894 – together with some images from the annual summer excursions of the Royal Arboricultural Society of Scotland which Paxton served as Photographic Artist 1897-1902.

The collection also reflects other facets of Paxton’s photographic interests: these included architectural studies, experiments with light, a fascination with capturing images of water in all its moods, and albums related to his membership of the Talbot Circulating Album Club. In addition, there are portraits of family and friends and lively studies of their leisure pursuits.

McDouall Collection

The collection illustrates the gradual transformation, from around 1900, of the garden at Logan House, near Stranraer, to the sub-tropical haven which eventually became Logan Botanic Garden. In the hands of brothers Kenneth McDouall (1870-1945) and Douglas McDouall (1872-1942), gifted and knowledgeable plantsmen, the old-fashioned country house garden, with a mixture of vegetables, fruit and flowers, attached to their family home, became a special place where, famously, tender exotics and more familiar garden species were all grown in the open to an exceptional standard.

The core of the Collection comprises nearly 500 items, mainly photographic prints, negatives and transparencies recording the progress of the garden and plants taken by Douglas McDouall. These are reputed to have been rescued by Helen McDouall of Logan (1873 - 1959), following the death of her brothers, when the Logan Estate left family ownership after 1945.

This material is supplemented by some 150 images, copied from 4 photographic albums compiled c1887-1954 by Helen McDouall, of Logan House, its garden and policies.

John MacWatt Primula Archive

John MacWatt MD (1857-1838) was a medical practitioner and sometime Medical Officer of Health for Duns Borough in the Scottish Borders, who also became a noted horticulturalist. He was particularly known for his expertise in the identification, cultivation and breeding of the genus Primula, a research interest he shared with successive Regius Keepers.

MacWatt’s horticultural archive was presented in 2023 by his daughter, Mrs Elizabeth Farquharson (1925-2023). This includes correspondence, scrapbooks, copies and drafts of published works and lectures, newspaper and journal cuttings, horticultural medals and certificates awarded by the Royal Horticultural Society and other organisations, together with photographs of plants in his collection and of his garden at ‘Morelands’, and catalogues of plants available from there.

The photographs supplement the plant portrait prints MacWatt had previously given to RBGE c1913, and the 87 negatives which followed in 1937 shortly before his death. This photographic material was the work of his neighbour Amy Nisbet Cameron (1871-1931), of Trinity Lodge, Duns, whose images illustrated MacWatt’s many publications including his 1923 monograph The Primulas of Europe.

Information about the collection is now available on the Archives Catalogue

RBGE Plant Portrait Print Collection

By the early 1900s, photographic images, mainly black and white from glass plate negatives, were beginning to form a significant part of RBGE’s plant reference system. Prints were habitually stored mounted paper or card sheets labelled with the species of the plant and the number of the negative, as recorded in the Photo Record Books, from which each print had been taken. Although often fragmentary in the form in which they survived, the sheets had clearly been used intensively, with later annotations regarding the plant family, further thoughts about the exact identity of the species pictured, and sometimes the addition of cuttings from journals or other publications relevant to the cultivation or habit of the species.

The collection consists of nearly 2,600 prints, dating from c1900 to 1949, recording plants in all stages of development. The catalogue takes the form of spreadsheets, listing what is known about each image. There are separate sheets for Primulas and Rhododendrons, species of particular research interest to successive Regius Keepers, prints of which are especially numerous.

Many of the images were the work of Robert Moyes Adam (1885-1987), appointed official photographer in 1915 (but effectively active from around 1906), a role which continued until his retirement in 1949. Earlier prints were produced by members of the Horticultural staff, particularly Foremen, already with a private interest in photography, notably David Sydney Fish (c1891-1913), who was employed in the Garden from 1986 to 1906. In addition to plant portraits taken in the Edinburgh Garden, the collection incorporates gifts of reference prints from other sources. These include 14 prints originating from Reginald Farrer’s 1914-1915 expedition with William Purdom to Kansu in North-west China, and Dr John MacWatt’s 1913 gift of 43 prints of Primulas in his collection, photographed by his neighbour Amy Cameron (1872- 1931; see also the John MacWatt Primula Archive above).

Sir George Taylor Collection

Thirty lantern slides and three black and white prints formerly in the possession of botanist Sir George Taylor (1904-1993). These originated from photographic images made during the expeditions of Frank Ludlow (1885-1972) and George Sherriff (1898-1967) in Tibet, Bhutan and associated areas,1933-1950, including the 1938 expedition in which Taylor participated. The slides, many richly coloured, are mainly botanical, with some topographical views. The large majority of the original images are attributable to George Sherriff, whose skilled photography of habitats and plants supplemented the information from the 21,000 herbarium specimens and samples of seed sent back to the British Museum (Natural History) and other organisations.

Publications

 ‘Remarkable Trees’: George Paxton, Late-Victorian Amateur Photographer, Studies in Photography 2013, 58-72

Helen McDouall of Logan (1873 ­–­ 1959): the forgotten gardener, The Botanics 60, Spring 2015, 8-9