Alexander Garden (naturalist)

Alexander Garden FRSE FRS (January 1730 – 15 April 1791) was a Scottish physician, botanist and zoologist. The gardenia flower is named after him. He lived for many years in Charleston, South Carolina, using his spare time to study plants and living creatures, and sending specimens to Carl Linnaeus.

Garden was born in January 1730 in Birse, Aberdeenshire, the son of Rev Alexander Garden (1685-1756) the parish minister. He studied medicine at Marischal College in the mid-1740s, discovering an interest in natural history while there. After two years as a surgeon's assistant in the navy, he continued his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh. One of his teachers was Charles Alston, the King's Botanist and Keeper of the Garden at Holyrood where medicinal plants were cultivated; Alston was an influence on Garden's growing interest in botany.

An opportunity came to practise medicine in South Carolina, where, a distant relative Reverend Alexander Garden had gone to minister to a congregation in Charleston. The younger Garden arrived there in April 1752, and started work in Prince William Parish. Marischal College granted his MD in 1754 and the following year he moved to Charleston (at that time called Charles Town) where he married Elizabeth Peronneau (1739–1805). Their children were Alexander, Margaret A., Harriotte, Juliette (who married Alexander Fotheringham), and William.

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