Trustees’ Garden

Trustees’ Garden, founded in Savannah, Georgia, in 1734, is an important early example of a public botanic garden and nursery in the British American colonies. It was established to collect plants that would grow best in Savannah’s climate with the goals of encouraging agriculture and establishing profitable silk and wine industries.

Overview

Alternate Names: Trustee Garden
Site Dates: 1734–1748
Site Owner(s): The Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia in America
Associated People: General James Oglethorpe (founder); Joseph Fitzwalter (1734–1735 and 1737–1738, head gardener); Paul Amatis (1735–1736, silk production expert; head gardener); Hugh Anderson (1736–1739, inspector of the public garden); Newdigate Stephens (1742–?, head gardener)
Location: Savannah, GA
Condition: demolished
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History

The Trustees’ Garden, established in 1734 on behalf of the Trustees for Establishing the Colony of Georgia in America by the British military officer James Oglethorpe (1696–1785), was a public garden located in Savannah. Founded two years after Oglethorpe secured the charter for the colony of Georgia and one year after he established Savannah, the ten-acre garden was part of Oglethorpe’s original plan for the town common located on the banks of the Savannah River on the east end of the town of Savannah (on what is now East Broad Street). There are no known extant images of Trustees’ Garden from the period, but one map created in 1757 includes an inscription marking the location of the “Trustees garden gate” in the lower right corner [Fig. 1 – map detail]. Trustees’ Garden is an important early example of an American public garden motivated by scientific principles and of the trans-Atlantic networks of people, plants, and ideas that would characterize efforts in botany and garden design during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Driven by British Enlightenment principals and commercial interests, Georgia Trustee Stephen Hales (1677–1761) and advisor Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), both members of the Royal Society in London, championed the garden as a site for scientific experimentation and modeled it after the examples of the botanic and physic gardens at Chelsea and Oxford in England. Experiments in the garden would, the Trustees hoped, determine what plants grew best in Savannah’s climate. Another goal for the Trustees’ Garden was to encourage colonists to cultivate the most successful crops. To that end, the garden served as a nursery providing free seeds and saplings for farmers and gardeners.

Gardeners planted a range of vegetation at Trustees’ Garden, including pear, apple, peach, orange, fig, and olive trees, as well as pomegranates, spices, and herbs. Francis Moore reported in 1736 that the garden had been arranged in different zones. English fruit trees were planted “in the coldest part of the Garden,” while fruits from warmer parts of Europe, including olives, figs, and pomegranates, were established in another section. In the most sheltered and warmest quarter of the garden, experiments growing coffee, cocoa, and cotton took root (view text).

The Trustees hired botanists to supply plants from Europe, the Caribbean, and Central and South America in the hopes that some of would prove adaptable to Savannah’s growing conditions. They first retained the Scottish botanist Dr. William Houstoun (d. 1733) in October 1732 for three years to make a voyage to Madeira, Jamaica, Cartagena, Porto Bello, Campeche, and Vera Cruz. Houstoun was charged with procuring exotic specimens—especially medicinal plants and herbs, on the advice of Sloane—in these locales to send to Savannah. Houstoun died soon after arriving in Jamaica, and Robert Millar was contracted by the Trustees in March 1734 to resume Houstoun’s project. Millar established a base in Jamaica and focused his efforts on collecting medicinal herbs such as Jesuits bark (used in the treatment of malaria and fevers), ipecacuhana (an emetic), and cochineal (used as a red dye) in Central and South America, but he soon ran afoul of Spanish authorities and his trip was cut short. A gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden supplied the Trustees with various seeds, including white mulberry, potash, and cotton. Other “friends of the Georgia experiment” contributed plants, seeds, and vines from Europe and the East Indies.

One of the Trustees’ main goals for the garden was to cultivate grapevines and white mulberry trees to produce wine and silk, which they hoped would prove profitable commodities for export that would benefit the British economy. In November 1732 Houstoun acquired grapevines in Madeira to support the Trustees’ interest in establishing viticulture in the colony and sent the vines to Savannah by way of Charleston, South Carolina. The Trustees also hired Paul Amatis (d. 1736), an Italian expert in silk production, to oversee the growing of white mulberry trees at the garden in Savannah, and soon brought in additional silk-makers from Piedmont to teach the colonists the art and science of silk production (view text). The Trustees’ hopes for a silk industry in Georgia were so strong that one side of their official seal featured a silkworm on a mulberry tree leaf [Fig. 2]. In addition, the Trustees sent twenty-five copies of the illustrated instructional treatise A Compendious Account of the Whole Art of Breeding, Nursing, and the Right Ordering of the Silk-Worm, published in London in 1733, to guide the colonists in raising silkworms [Fig. 3]. By 1740 nearly the entire Trustees’ Garden plot was turned over to the cultivation of mulberry trees.vii Despite these efforts, the Trustees’ expectations for prosperous silk and wine industries in the colony ultimately failed to materialize.

—Lacey Baradel

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Texts

• Moore, Francis, February 1736, describing the Trustees’ Garden (1744: 29–32)xiv

“There is near the Town, to the East, a Garden belonging to the Trustees, consisting of 10 Acres; the Situation is delightful, one half of it is upon the Top of a Hill, the Foot of which the River Savannah washes, and from it you see the Woody Islands in the Sea. The Remainder of the Garden is the Side and some plain low Ground at the Foot of the Hill, where several fine Springs break out. In the Garden is variety of Soils; the Top is sandy and dry, the Sides of the Hill are Clay, and the Bottom is a black rich Garden-Mould well watered. On the North-part of the Garden is left standing a Grove of Part of the old Wood, as it was before the arrival of the Colony there. The Trees in the Grove are mostly Bay, Sassafras, Evergreen Oak, Pellitory, Hickary [sic], American Ash, and the Laurel Tulip. This last is looked upon as one of the most beautiful Trees in the World. . .

“The Garden is laid out with Cross-walks planted with Orange-trees, but the last Winter a good deal of Snow having fallen, had killed those upon the Top of the Hill down to their Roots, but they being cut down, sprouted again, as I saw when I returned to Savannah. In the Squares between the Walks, were vast Quantities of Mulberry-trees, this being a Nursery for all the Province, and every Planter that desires it, has young Trees given him gratis from this Nursery. These white Mulberry-trees were planted in order to raise Silk, for which Purpose several Italians were brought, at the Trustees’ Expence, from Piedmont by Mr. Amatis; they have fed Worms, and wound Silk to as great Perfection as any that ever came out Italy: But the Italians falling out, one of them stole away the Machines for winding, broke the Coppers, and spoiled all the Eggs, which he could not steal, and fled to South-Carolina. The others, who continued faithful, had saved but a few Eggs when Mr. Oglethorpe arrived, therefore he forbade any Silk should be wound, but that all the Worms should be suffered to eat through their Balls, in order to have more Eggs again next Year. The Italian Women are obliged to take English Girls Apprentices, whom they teach to wind and feed; and the Men have taught our English Gardeners to tend the Mulberry-trees, and our Joyners have learned how to make the Machines for winding. As the Mulberry-trees increase, there will be a great Quantity of Silk made here.

“Besides the Mulberry-trees; there are in some of the Quarters in the coldest part of the Garden, all kinds of Fruit-trees usual in England, such as Apples, Pears, &c. In another Quarter are Olives, Figs, Vines, Pomegranates and such Fruits as are natural to the warmest Parts of Europe. At the bottom of the Hill, well sheltered from the North-wind, and in the warmest part of the Garden, there was a Collection of West-India Plants and Trees, some Coffee, some Cocoa-nuts, Cotton, Palma-christi, and several West-Indian physical Plants, some sent up by Mr. Eveleigh a publick-spirited Merchant at Charles-Town, and some by Dr. Houstoun, from the Spanish West-Indies, where he was sent at the Expence of a Collection raised by that curious Physician Sir Hans Sloan, for to collect and send them to Georgia, where the Climate was capable of making a Garden which might contain all kinds of Plants; to which Design his Grace the Duke of Richmond, the Early of Derby, the Lord Peters, and the Apothecary’s Company contributed very generously; as did Sir Hans himself. The Quarrels amongst the Italians proved fatal to most of these Plants, and they were laboring to repair that Loss when I was there, Mr. Miller being employ’d in the room of Dr. Houstoun, who died in Jamaica. We heard he had wrote an Account of his having obtain’d the Plant from whence the true Balsamum Capivi is drawn; and that he was in hopes of getting that from whence the Jesuits Bark is taken, he designing for that Purpose to send to the Spanish West Indies.

“There is a Plant of Bamboo Cane brought from the East Indies, and sent over by Mr. Towers, which thrives well. There is also some Tea-seeds, which came from the same Place; but the latter, though great Care was taken, did not grow.” back up to History (1) | back up to History (2)

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