List of professional gardeners

This is a list of people noted for their contribution to gardening, either by working as gardeners or garden designers by occupation, or by commissioning famous gardens.

It does not include the innumerable people who count gardening among their hobbies.

Notable gardeners

The following are or were gardeners or garden designers by occupation. The list includes garden designers and landscape gardeners, who are involved chiefly in the design of gardens rather than the practical aspects of horticulture. It also includes experts noted for their writing or broadcasting on the subject.

• John Abercrombie, 18th-century Scottish horticulturalist and garden writer
• Luis Barragán, 20th-century Mexican architect, planner of public gardens
• Lancelot "Capability" Brown, English landscape architect
• Beth Chatto (b. 1926), English creator of gardens at Elmstead Market that demonstrate gardening under extreme conditions
• Carolus Clusius, pioneering botanist, 16th-century scientific horticulturist
• Esther Dean, 20th-century Australian pioneer of "no-dig gardening"
• Charlie Dimmock, English gardener and broadcaster
• Andrew Jackson Downing, 19th-century American landscape designer
• Helena Rutherfurd Ely, author of A Woman's Hardy Garden (1903), Another Hardy Garden Book (1905), The Practical Flower Garden (1911), owner of Meadowburn Farms
• John Evelyn, 17th-century English diarist, scholar and gardener
• Ian Hamilton Finlay, 20th-century Scottish artist and gardener
• Margery Fish, 20th-century English gardener and garden writer
• Bob Flowerdew, English organic gardener and broadcaster
• Alys Fowler, British gardener and broadcaster.
• Pippa Greenwood, British plant pathologist and broadcaster
• C. Z. Guest, New York Post gardening columnist
• Robert Hart, 20th-century British forest gardener
• Gertrude Jekyll, 20th-century British garden designer
• William Kent, 18th-century English landscape architect
• Louisa Boyd Yeomans King, 20th-century American gardener and author
• André Le Nôtre, 17th-century French landscape architect
• Peter Joseph Lenné, 18th-century Prussian landscape architect
• Christopher Lloyd, 20th-century English gardener and garden writer
• John Beverley Nichols, 20th-century author of many gardening books
• J.C.U. Niedermann, 19th-century Wisconsin professional gardener and legislator
• Frederick Law Olmsted, 19th-century designer, father of American landscape architecture
• Russell Page, 20th-century British landscape architect
• Humphrey Repton, 18th-century English landscape designer
• William Robinson, 20th-century Irish practical gardener and journalist, who prompted the English cottage garden movement
• George Sinclair, 19th-century Scottish gardener
• Geoffrey Smith, 20th-century English gardener and broadcaster
• Theophrastus, 3rd-century BC philosopher, author of Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants
• Percy Thrower, 20th-century British gardener and broadcaster
• Alan Titchmarsh, 21st-century English gardener and broadcaster
• John Tradescant the younger, 17th-century botanist and gardener
• Edna Walling, 20th-century Australian garden designer, writer and photographer
• Edith Wharton, 20th-century American writer and landscape architect
• Albert Wilson, 20th-century American botanist, landscape architect, author and broadcaster

People who have notably commissioned famous gardens

Other people whose primary profession was not gardening have made notable contributions to horticulture by planning or commissioning significant gardens.

• Michael Heseltine, 20th-century British politician, noted arboriculturist
• Thomas Jefferson, 19th-century American president, recognized for planning the grounds of the University of Virginia
• Lucullus, 1st-century BC Roman general, noted for laying out the Gardens of Lucullus
• Nebuchadnezzar II, 6th-century neo-Babylonian king, credited with founding the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
• Vita Sackville-West, English author, gardening columnist, creator of Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent
• William Shenstone, 18th-century English poet, one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes
• Solomon, Biblical king recorded as creating gardens, possibly near Etam

Fictional gardeners

• Pat, the White Rabbit's gardener in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
• Boothby, recurring character in Star Trek, groundskeeper of Starfleet Academy
• Chance the Gardener in the film Being There, a simple American whose name is misheard as "Chauncey Gardiner" and accidentally becomes a Presidential advisor and candidate
• Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings, a hobbit, the servant and companion of Frodo Baggins, the Ring-bearer
• Tom and Barbara Good in 1975 TV series The Good Life, a middle-class English couple who try to become self-sufficient on the produce of their garden in Surbiton
• Souseiseki and Suiseiseki in the manga and anime Rozen Maiden, referred to as gardeners for their ability to tend not only plants but also the "soul trees" of humans
• The Chief Gardener of the Imperial Palace Grounds was a key figure on Trantor, the galactic capitol in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series – a high functionary with a palatial office in the enormous Imperial complex and "an army of men and women under him"
• There are multiple gardeners, botanists and herbologists in the Harry Potter series:
  • Pomona Sprout and Herbert Beery, Herbology teachers
  • Frank Bryce, the Riddles' gardener
  • Miranda Goshawk (in the film version) and Phyllida Spore, two authors
  • Elladora Ketteridge and Beaumont Majoribanks, discovered gillyweed, a fictional plant
  • Hadrian Whittle, named after a real-life garden designer
  • Rubeus Hagrid, gameskeeper, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts

See also

• Celebrity gardener
• List of gardening topics
• List of landscape architects