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People & Organisations
Person

Comber, Harold Frederick

  • GB/NNAF/P153422
  • Person
  • 1897-1969

Born Sussex 1897; died Oregon, U.S.A. 1969
Harold Comber’s father was head gardener at Nymans in Sussex and on leaving school he worked there for two years, before moving, aged 17, to Colesbourne Park, Gloucestershire where he managed the glasshouses and botanical collections. He studied horticulture at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh from 1920 to 1923, obtaining exceptionally high marks in all his subjects. This made him an ideal candidate for two plant-hunting expeditions in the Andes sponsored by the a group of wealthy gardening enthusiasts in 1925-26 and 1926-27, from which he sent back seeds and herbarium specimens of over 1200 species, including the Chilean Fire Bush and several species of Berberis and Eucryphia. In 1930 he made a further plant hunting trip to Tasmania and on his return took up the post of manager of the Burnham Lily Nursery in Buckinghamshire. In 1952 he emigrated to America to take up a position as lily hybridizer at the Jan de Graff Oregon bulb farms, retiring in 1962. In retirement he remained active, writing prodigiously and listing the native plants of specific areas for the Native Plant Society of Oregon and at the time of his death was revising his monograph on lilies of the world. In his lifetime Harold Comber collected many species new to science, a new genus Combera was named after him.
D.W.

Fletcher, Harold Roy

  • GB/NNAF/P157940
  • Person
  • 1907-1978

Born Derbyshire 1907; died Edinburgh 1978
Harold Fletcher graduated in botany from Manchester University in 1929, and obtained a doctorate from Aberdeen University in 1933 where he lectured in botany. In 1934 he moved to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, continuing work on the taxonomy of Asiatic floras and gaining a DSc from Edinburgh University in 1939. Jointly with William Wright Smith he authored a key monograph on the genus primula, his other specialism being rhododendrons. Turning his attention to horticulture, he was appointed Director of the RHS Garden at Wisley in 1951 before returning to Edinburgh in 1954 as assistant Keeper at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and then Regius Keeper in 1956 (the point at which the posts of Regius Keeper and Regius Professor of the University were no longer held by one person). He energetically set about rejuvenating botany and horticulture in the Garden and oversaw a number of major developments including the refurbishment of Inverleith House as an art gallery, a purpose build Herbarium and Library which opened 1964, a new range of glasshouses, and the acquisition of the Logan Estate in Wigtownshire as a subtropical garden. He stimulated the post war revival of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh and was President of the International Association of Botanical Gardens 1964-69, having brought the Tenth International Botanical Congress to Edinburgh in 1964. Fletcher was appointed Queen’s Botanist in Scotland in 1967 and Honorary Professor of Botany at Edinburgh University in 1968. With W.H. Brown, he wrote the ‘History of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh 1670-1970’ and also authored books on the history of the RHS and plant explorers. Fletcher had a deep love of the arts and after his retirement in 1970 served on the board of the Edinburgh College of Art.
Sources: R. Desmond ‘Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists; HR Fletcher and WH Brown ‘The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 1670-1970’; Deni Bown, ‘4 Gardens in One’.
D.W.

Hope, Dr. Thomas Charles

  • GB/NNAF/P159345; VIAF ID: 9836810 (Personal); ISNI: 0000 0000 6303 3644
  • Person
  • 1766-1844

Hutchison, Isobel Wylie

  • GB/NNAF/P160578
  • Person
  • 1889-1982

The Scottish botanist, filmmaker, author, poet, painter and arctic explorer Isobel Wylie Hutchison was born in 1889 at the family home of Carlowrie in West Lothian. As a youngster she became a self taught plant collector and naturalist enjoying solitary walks in the countryside. She longed to travel and amongst many journeys, travelled to the Holy Land by herself in 1923, before making four major expeditions north to the Arctic between 1927 and 1936, to Greenland, Alaska, Arctic Canada and the Aleutian Islands where she collected plants, took photographs and made films. She died in 1982.

Bowles, Edward Augustus

  • GB/NNAF/P162208
  • Person
  • 1865-1954

Horticulturist, plantsman and garden writer.

Druce, George Claridge

  • GB/NNAF/P162266
  • Person
  • 1850-1932

English Botanist and Mayor of Oxford

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