George Don's day book records the orders for plants coming into his Botanic garden and Nursery at Doo Hillock / Dove Hillock in Forfar.

'A Catalogue of a few of the Rarest and Latest Introduced Plants, cultivated for sale at Don's Botanic Garden and Nursery, Forfar', by G. Don; late curator of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh; Honorary [Corresponding] Member of the Linnaean Society, London; and late President of the Rational Institute of Dundee.
Catalogue includes greenhouse plants, shrubs and herbaceous plants, is 17 pages longs and contains the following quote from Don at the end: “this catalogue contains but a small proportion of my Herbaceous Collection; which is equaled by few in Britain, and surpassed by none perhaps but the Cambridge one. I have also upwards of three hundred species of Grasses.”
Front cover slightly annotated by former owner Patrick Neill.

Folder of postcards and photographs, many annotated by Ewen, from and of Forfar at the turn of the 20th century, presumably all sent by Jane Taylor Ewen, Mill Bank, Forfar to Isaac Bayley Balfour in addition to those stored in Bayley Balfour’s George Don scrapbook, GDS/1.
Includes: 9 postcards
8 photographs of Forfar including one taken at the unveiling of the Don memorial in Forfar churchyard, 08/09/1910 – shows Claridge Druce holding his address and John Knox.
1 pamphlet – “Sixteen Views of Forfar”
1 pamphlet – “A Month in the Country for Working Girls” about a raspberry picking scheme for city girls to work on a Blairgowrie raspberry farm – Jane Taylor Ewen’s cousin is involved; she owns the farm – see Balfour’s Don scrapbook, GDS/1. On reverse of pamphlet is poem written by Willie Taylor, Ewen’s cousin, called ‘Immortality’ (An Ode to Century old rose leaves) – rose leaves thought to have been given to Taylor Ewen’s grandmother by George Don. JTE had to copy out as she could not get a copy. Originally published in “St Andrew”, a parish church magazine. No date. [c.1905]

Plus – 2 photographs of Brechin – not J.T. Ewen’s handwriting on reverse, and postcard to I. Bayley Balfour from Eug. [Eugenius] Warming, Denmark, 21.12.1905 – unrelated to above but found in same folder so kept together.

• Report on the Tenth International Mycology/ Plant Pathology Excursion, held in Aberdeen between August 13th and 20th, 1964. Record of site visits over the period, discusses plant diseases, list of fungi found and their locations.

1 box containing book of lichen dyed samples and list 'Native Plants used as Dyes in Tweed Making'

• file: 'The Dyeing Properties of some Scottish Lichens and of a few other materials' Pattern Book by T.S. Patterson D.Sc. Ph.D University of Glasgow
• report: Report on the Frequency of Occurrence of Dye-Producing Lichens in Scotland by Edward Stewart. M.A., B.Sc. Fellow of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh.
• list: Native Plants used as Dyes in Tweed Making, includes extracts from papers describing experiments on the dyeing property of lichens by W. Lauder Lindsay, M.D., Assistant Physician, Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries, 1854-1855, and list of lichens which yield dyes based on Les Lichens Utiles by F. Henneguy, Paris, 1883, and Further list of Highland Native Dyes from Occasional Papers by R.C. Maclagan pp. n.d. Paper on 'Highland Dyeing' read before Royal Scottish Society of Arts, 1898 [various versions of these lists - will need sorting before proper listing and cataloguing]
• report: 'Notes on Occurrence and Distribution in Scotland of Dye-Producing Lichens, Supplementary to report on Occurrence of Lecanora tartarea Ach. by E.J.A. Stewart, M.A., B.Sc.
• report: 'The Dyeing Properties of some Scottish Lichens and of a few other materials' by T.S. Paterson, D.Sc. Ph.D., University of Glasgow
• documentation showing that Brian Coppins bought this batch of material from an Antiquarian Booksellers in 1998.

The collection comprises photographs and reports related to the gathering and preparation of Sphagnum moss, in and around the Moffat/Beattock area, S.W. Scotland, which was used as a medical dressing for wounds during the First World War.