Treasures of the Archive

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Our archive collections include the official archive of the Royal Horticultural Society and the collected archives of many individuals and horticultural organisations. The RHS archive captures the development of the Society and its role in supporting gardeners such as the inmates of the Ruhleben Internment Camp in World War One. Plant collectors, breeders, nurserymen, garden designers and many more are also represented, with key archives including those of William Robinson, E.A. Bowles, Gertrude Jekyll, Constance Spry, Russell Page and Roy Lancaster. Gardeners’ letters, diaries and notebooks reveal their approach to the art, science and craft of gardening.

Together these fascinating collections trace the development of gardening and its impact on our landscape and lives.

Records

‘The Account Book of Lancelot Brown ‘Capability’ Brown, the great landscape gardener of Fenstanton, Hants’
Photographic postcard of a flower bed along the promenade at Ruhleben internment camp, Germany
Photographic postcard of members of the Ruhleben Horticultural Society holding pumpkins and gourds, Ruhleben internment camp, Germany
Letter from C. Darwin [Charles Darwin] [to William Robinson]
‘Tree and garden book. Gravetye Manor’
[1755] A catalogue of trees, shrubs, plants and flowers which are propagated for sale by Christopher Gray, nursery-man, at Fulham, in Middlesex
Waresly Park, in Huntingdonshire, a seat of William Nedham Esq.