Pierre-Paul Saunier

Pierre-Paul Saunier (1751–1818) was a gardener who worked first at Montbard in Eastern France, and then at the Jardin du Roi in Paris where he was a protégé of head gardener André Thouin (1746–1824). In 1785 Thouin selected him to accompany the botanist André Michaux (1746–1803) to North America where he was to assist in the establishment of a royal garden for the French crown.

Saunier was one of a number of gardener-botanists (see also Félix Delahaye (1767–1829), Anselme Riedlé (1775–1801), Antoine Guichenot (fl. 1801–1817), Jean Nicolas Collignon (1762–?1788), and Antoine Sautier (?–1801)) sent by Thouin from the Jardin du Roi on voyages of exploration to procure plants and plant products for the benefit of the French nation and to assist botanists in the collection, transport and preservation of botanical specimens.

Saunier's life story has been assembled by William Robbins and Mary Howson of the New York Botanical Garden and Department of Botany, Columbia University: their account includes lists of seeds and plants sent by Saunier to France in 1788, 1790 and 1791 together with literature and letters relating to his life.

The Age of Discovery and Enlightenment from the 16th to 18th centuries resulted in European colonial expansion and the search for new commodities, including plant trophies and curiosities. This enterprise was centred in the tropics, but by the 18th century the European desire for plants and seeds had extended to temperate North America. Although captains of vessels, American residents and plant people of the New World were encouraged to exchange plants it was considered desirable to set of gardens specifically for this purpose. It was in this context that King Louis XVI of France appointed botanist and naturalist André Michaux from the Jardin du Roi in Paris (later the Jardin des Plantes) to establish a royal garden in North America to facilitate the accumulation of seeds and plants for shipment to France. The main purpose was to obtain plants useful for building and carpentry, forage and medicine; ornamental plants were of secondary importance. In the course of his 11 year stay, from 1785 to 1796, Michaux established two gardens, one in New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York, the other in Charleston, Carolina.He also sent back about 90 cases of seeds and 60,000 plants. Accompanying Michaux was the promising young gardener from the Jardin du Roi in Paris, Pierre-Paul Saunier, sometimes referred to as a journeyman gardener or élève du museum.

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