The Correspondent

Peter Collinson was born in London on 28 January 1694, the son of a Quaker cloth merchant. Collinson eventually followed in his father’s business. While still a boy, however, he also developed what became a lifelong love of plants. An early friendship with Hans Sloane led to his becoming a fellow of the Royal Society in 1728. In later years he contributed articles to the Philosophical Transactions and Gentleman’s Magazine. He befriended many eminent botanists, horticulturalists, and natural historians in Europe, and his widespread commercial contacts enabled him to acquire correspondents in Britain’s American colonies as well. Americans, especially the naturalist John Bartram in Philadelphia, sent him large quantities of seeds and seedlings. That enabled him to introduce to Britain a large number of trees and herbs that were native to North America. Many of these made their way into his own garden at Mill Hill, an estate that he inherited in 1749.

In 1762 he wrote to Haller, “[F]or North American Plants, my Garden is not excelled in Variety by any Other Garden that I know.”

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Its splendors he regularly described for Haller. At Mill Hill he died, on 11 August 1768.