Golden Bough IV

Samuel Curtis (1779 – 1860) maintained famous gardens with a botanist’s technical prowess and an artist’s aesthetic sensibilities. Born in England, Curtis purchased a garden in Walworth, gaining enough horticultural inspiration and knowledge to publish a remarkable botanical book, “The Beauties of Flora,” illustrated by accomplished artists Thomas Baxter and Clara Maria Pope. Five years later, Curtis bought a monumental property in Glazenwood and filled it with spectacular flowering shrubs. Fascinated by magnolias and camellias, he published his most famous work, “The Monograph of the Genus Camilla,” also illustrated by Baxter and Pope. Curtis eventually bought a garden in La Chaire on the island of Jersey, filling it with a diversity of subtropical plants that remains unparalleled to this day.