George Sinclair (horticulturist)

George Sinclair (1787 – 13 March 1834) was a Scottish gardener.

George Sinclair was born at Mellerstain in Berwickshire, where his father was gardener to the Hon. George Baillie of Jerviswood, and was baptised in the parish church of Earlston on 25 November 1787. He was the youngest of seven children born to Duncan Sinclair (1750–1833) and Christian Tait. Duncan Sinclair had been working at Mellerstain House for almost eight years when George was born and was to remain there until his death in 1833. George's uncle, Archibald Sinclair, was also a gardener and in 1791 began working at nearby Minto House; in the early 19th century he was employed as superintendent of the estate at Bonnington House near Lanark by Lady Mary Ross, a distant relative of George Baillie. Like his brother Duncan, Archibald remained a loyal servant there until his death, also in 1833. George and his brother, John, both continued in the family tradition and became gardeners. John was employed by the 7th Earl of Denbigh at Newnham Paddox in Warwickshire (1806–1815), and George was gardener to the 6th Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire from about 1807 until 1825, when he went into partnership as a seedsman with John Cormack and his son, John, at New Cross in Surrey.

By 1809 George Sinclair was conducting experiments at the direction of the Duke and also publishing papers. In 1813 he entered into a debate with Dr. William Richardson about fiorin grass in the Agricultural Magazine. He was a corresponding member of the Caledonian Horticultural Society in Edinburgh and read a paper there in March 1814 entitled On the prevention of the blight in fruit trees. He had struck up a friendship with Thomas Gibbs of Ampthill in Bedfordshire, who was seedsman to the Board of Agriculture and had premises in Half Moon Street Piccadilly and a nursery in Brompton. Sinclair corresponded with him regularly and purchased seeds and plants from him. Some of his letters refer to the experiments that he was conducting at Woburn Abbey under the guidance of Sir Humphry Davy to compare the performance of different species and various mixtures of grasses and herbs on different types of soil. These experiments and their results were published in an Appendix to Davy's Elements of Agricultural Chemistry in 1815. Sinclair had also consulted James Sowerby about the analysis of soils and submitted an advance copy of his publication on grasses to the 3rd Earl of Hardwicke for his opinion. Hortus gramineus Woburnensis was published in 1816, an expensive folio volume containing dried specimens of the grasses examined. These were replaced by plates in cheaper editions published in 1825, 1826, and 1829, and in a German translation by Frederick Schmidt of 1826. The nutritional value of the grasses as animal fodder was assessed through comparison of their water-soluble constituents. Between 1818 and 1820 Sinclair carried out experiments on the use of salt as manure for the growing of wheat which he described in a prize essay.

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