Graham Stuart Thomas
| Graham Stuart Thomas | |
|---|---|
Graham Thomas holding his namesake rose, bred by David Austin
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| Born |
Graham Stuart Thomas 13 April 1909 Cambridge |
| Died | 17 April 2003 (aged 94) Woking |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Botanist, garden designer, author, artist |
| Known for | Roses, garden design, garden writing |
| Awards | OBE; Victoria Medal of Honour; Veitch Memorial Medal |
Graham Stuart Thomas OBE (3 April 1909 – 17 April 2003), was an English BSc botanist, best known for his work with garden roses, his restoration and stewardship of over 100 National Trust gardens and for writing 19 books on gardening, many of which remain classics today.
In his obituary in the Los Angeles Times, Clair Martin, rose curator of Huntington Botanical Gardens said: "Thomas set about preserving the heritage of old roses when many of them were on the verge of extinction".
Graham Stuart Thomas was born in Cambridge into a family of keen amateur gardeners and musicians. His father William Richard Thomas was a clerk to Cambridge University syndicate. He is said to have developed his interest in plants at the age of six, when he was given a fuchsia as a gift. On another occasion, he spent a birthday present of half a crown buying alpine plants on Cambridge Market. By the age of eight. he had decided to make gardening his career.
At 17, he joined Cambridge University Botanic Garden, which enabled him to also attend university lectures on horticulture and botany. These lectures were his only formal education in the field of horticulture, although as a member of staff at the botanic garden he built up an up a practical and theoretical knowledge that would become the foundation of his career. One of his earliest design projects was working on the rose garden there.
In 1930, Thomas joined the then famous Six Hills Nursery in Stevenage, working under alpine expert Clarence Elliott. The following year he became foreman at T. Hilling & Co (Hillings), a renowned 300-acre nursery near Chobham, Surrey.
It was while working at Hillings that Thomas met the formidable garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, then aged 88, when he wrote her a letter and she invited him for a cup of tea and a chat about gardening. She became a mentor to the young gardener, passing on her theories of garden design as an art. It was around this time that Thomas began to collect old shrub and climbing rose varieties, many of which had fallen out of favour because they only flowered once during the season.
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