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Fred Wood joined the RBGE in June 1947 as a labourer, and after two years became a probationer (student gardener). In 1952, now a gardener, he looked after part of the rock garden, part of the pond, and the "Natural Order Beds," which displayed the plant kingdom laid out based on George Bentham and Sir J.D. Hooker's Handbook of British Flora. Under Alf Evans as Assistant Curator, Wood worked as Botanical Foreman in charge of the rock garden, the woodland garden, and the pond. Fred Wood left the RBGE in 1966, and worked variously in West Germany, Scotland, England, and Wales. Fred Wood retired in March 1984.

William Arthur graduated in medicine in Leiden in 1707 and practised in Fife, becoming a member of the Edinburgh College of Physicians in 1714. He received the Royal Warrant of appointment to the offices of the King’s Botanist and Keeper of the physic garden at Holyrood in 1715. However despite the Warrant saying he was ‘skilled in botany’ there is no evidence of this and it is likely that he secured the posts through political influence, accessed through his marriage. He was more famous for his involvement in a chaotic and unsuccessful Jacobite plot to seize Edinburgh Castle in 1715 (as told in Walter Scott’s ‘Tales of a Grandfather’) after which he escaped to Rome where he died the following year of dysentery.
Sources: Fletcher and Brown ‘The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 1670-1970’; (R. Desmond ‘Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists); (Deni Bown, ‘4 Gardens in One’)
D.W.