Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Blaikie, Thomas, 1751-1838, gardener
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1751-1838
History
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’.
Places
Scotland
United Kingdom (1751-1775)
Switzerland (1775)
Normandy (c1776-1778)
Paris (c1778-1838)
Legal status
Functions, occupations and activities
Gardener and garden designer
Plant collector
Mandates/sources of authority
Internal structures/genealogy
General context
Thomas Blaikie was employed as a gardener by members of the French nobility during the period of the French Revolution in the late 18th century. Materials within the archive record his experiences of the time and detail his subsequent efforts to obtain compensation for the losses he incurred.
Relationships area
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Access points area
Subject access points
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Occupations
Control area
Authority record identifier
Institution identifier
GB 235
Rules and/or conventions used
ISAAR (CPF) 2004
ISO 8601
Status
Level of detail
Partial
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
2019-06-06 (creation)
Language(s)
- English
Script(s)
Sources
'Thomas Blaikie: The 'Capability' Brown of France 1751-1838' - Taylor, Patricia, 2001
Maintenance notes
Creator of record: Emma Filshie