Sir Joseph Paxton

Orchid: Giant-flowered dendrobium. Dendrobium formosum.
Joseph Paxton was born to a small farming family in Milton Bryant, Bedfordshire. At an early age, Joseph was sent to work his brother William’s farm but was harshly treated and soon ran away. After a number of Dickensian adventures, he found work as a "garden boy" at Battlesden Park, a stately home near Woburn. Here he found his vocation and every plant he tended grew and flourished.

When he was twenty-one, Paxton was made ‘foreman in charge of creeping plants’ at the Horticultural Society in Chiswick. It was there that he made the contact that was to shape his life, striking a friendship with the Duke of Devonshire. The Duke was an introverted young bachelor and one of the wealthiest men in Britain. He admired Paxton's work and put him in charge of the gardens at Chatsworth, with an annual salary of £70. In 1826, Paxton married Sara Brown, niece of the housekeeper at Chatsworth and it was then that his career as a gardener, as well as a writer became very serious.

 In 1831, he founded the monthly Horticultural Register and three years later, started publication of the Magazine of Botany. In 1840, Paxton completed the Great Conservatory at Chatsworth - an engineering feat likened by one guest to St. Peter's in Rome. Several publications later, Paxton founded the Flower Garden. At the same time, he received the Royal Commission for the building of an immense glass palace to house the Great Exhibition, The Crystal Palace, which was built in 6 months and earned Paxton his knighthood. However it is his contribution to horticultural and the dissemination of that information for which he is most remembered.