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Hughes worked on Plasmodiophora brassicae / Clubroot disease at the College of Agriculture (East Coast). He was Treasurer of the Botanical Society of Scotland from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s.

(right click, open link in new tab): https://stories.rbge.org.uk/archives/28160

Thomas Blaikie was born in 1751 in Corstorphine, the son of a market gardener. It is suggested he may have been a student gardener at RBGE and possibly then worked at Kew, the Hammersmith nursery and Upton House in East Ham for Dr John Fothergill. He was engaged jointly by Dr Fothergill and Dr William Pitcairn to undertake a plant collecting trip in the Swiss Alps from April to December 1775. In September 1776 James Lee of the Hammersmith Nursery engaged Blaikie to provide plants for the Comte de Lauraguais and he was subsequently employed to work on the Comte’s garden in Normandy. From 1778 he was employed in the gardens at Bagatelle by the Comte D’Artois, the youngest brother of Louis XVI and future Charles X. He also worked at St Leu, Monceau and Le Raincy for the Duc de Chartres (who later became Duc D’Orleans and then Philippe Égalité) and undertook a number of private commissions. It is also thought that he was involved in making alterations to the gardens at Malmaison.

Blaikie is credited with introducing the English style of gardening and British gardeners to France, where his method of grafting came to be known as ‘graffe Blaikie’. He died at his house on the rue de Vignes in Paris in 1838. His diaries covering the period 1775 to 1792 were published in 1931, entitled ‘Diary of a Scotch Gardener at the French Court at the end of the Eighteenth Century’.

1955-1961 - B.Sc. (Hons) in Botany at University College London
1961-1962 - M.Sc. in Biochemistry at University College London
1962-1965 - Ph.D. in Plant Biochemistry at Jesus College, Cambridge
1965-1966 - 1 year Overseas Research Fellowship (Ministry of Overseas Development) at Tea Research Station, Mlanje (now Mulanje), Malawi
1967-1970 - 3 years within International Biological Programme (IBP) with the U.K. Nature Conservancy working on Productivity of Native Ecosystems, at Moor House Field Station, Cumberland
1971-2001 - U.K. Forestry Commission working on Biochemical and Molecular analysis of native and introduced forest trees.