Biography

George Sinclair was born at Mellerstain in Berwickshire

Berwickshire

Berwickshire or the County of Berwick is a registration county, a committee area of the Scottish Borders Council, and a lieutenancy area of Scotland, on the border with England. The town after which it is named—Berwick-upon-Tweed—was lost by Scotland to England in 1482...

, where his father was gardener to the Hon. George Baillie of Jerviswood, and was baptised in the parish church of Earlston

Earlston

Earlston , formerly Ercildoune, is a civil parish and market town in the county of Berwickshire, within the Scottish Borders. It is situated on the River Leader in Lauderdale, Scotland.-Early history:...

 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

Mellerstain House

Mellerstain House is a stately home around 13 kilometres north of Kelso in the Borders, Scotland. It is currently the home of the 13th Earl of Haddington....

 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

Lanark

Lanark is a small town in the central belt of Scotland. Its population of 8,253 makes it the 100th largest settlement in Scotland. The name is believed to come from the Cumbric Lanerc meaning "clear space, glade"....

 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

Earl of Denbigh

Earl of Denbigh is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1622 for the courtier and soldier William Feilding, 1st Viscount Feilding. He was Master of the Great Wardrobe under King James I and also took part in the Expedition to Cádiz of 1625...

 at Newnham Paddox in Warwickshire

Warwickshire

Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...

 (1806–1815), and George was gardener to the 6th Duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey

Woburn Abbey

Woburn Abbey , near Woburn, Bedfordshire, England, is a country house, the seat of the Duke of Bedford and the location of the Woburn Safari Park.- Pre-20th century :...

 in Bedfordshire

Bedfordshire

Bedfordshire is a ceremonial county of historic origin in England that forms part of the East of England region.It borders Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Northamptonshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the west and Hertfordshire to the south-east....

 from about 1807 until 1825, when he went into partnership as a seedsman with John Cormack and his son, John, at New Cross

New Cross

New Cross is a district and ward of the London Borough of Lewisham, England. It is situated 4 miles south-east of Charing Cross. The ward covered by London post town and the SE 14 postcode district. New Cross is near St Johns, Telegraph Hill, Nunhead, Peckham, Brockley, Deptford and Greenwich...

 in Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

.

Horticultural work

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

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...

 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

Ampthill

Ampthill is a small town and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England, between Bedford and Luton, with a population of about 6,000. It is administered by Central Bedfordshire Council. A regular market has taken place on Thursdays for centuries.-History:...

 in Bedfordshire, who was seedsman to the Board of Agriculture and had premises in Half Moon Street Piccadilly

Piccadilly

Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...

 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

James Sowerby

James Sowerby was an English naturalist and illustrator. Contributions to published works, such as A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland or English Botany, include his detailed and appealing plates...

 about the analysis of soils and submitted an advance copy of his publication on grasses to the 3rd Earl of Hardwicke

Earl of Hardwicke

Earl of Hardwicke is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1754 for Philip Yorke, 1st Baron Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain from 1737 to 1756. He had already been created Baron Hardwicke, of Hardwicke in the County of Gloucester, in 1733, and was made Viscount...

 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.

Sinclair also corresponded with Sir James Edward Smith, founder of the Linnean Society, about various plants. By 1823 he was a Fellow of the Horticultural Society where he read a paper on the Woburn perennial kale. On 26 March 1824 he became a fellow of the Linnean Society, having been elected by Joseph Sabine

Joseph Sabine

Joseph Sabine was an English lawyer, naturalist and writer on horticulture.He was born into a prominent Anglo-Irish family in Tewin, Hertfordshire, the eldest son of Joseph Sabine. His younger brother was Sir Edward Sabine....

 and the Duke of Bedford. In 1822 the Duke of Bedford had begun a comprehensive collection of exotic and indigenous heaths

Ericaceae

The Ericaceae, commonly known as the heath or heather family, is a group of mostly calcifuge flowering plants. The family is large, with roughly 4000 species spread across 126 genera, making it the 14th most speciose family of flowering plants...

 as a way of recuperating from a very severe illness. In his Introduction to Hortus ericaeus Woburnensis which was published in February 1825 the Duke states that the collection was completed under the superintendence of his former gardener, George Sinclair. In Hortus Woburnensis, written later by Sinclair’s successor James Forbes, the design of the heath parterre

Parterre

A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...

s at Woburn is also attributed to Sinclair, and in a letter to the Duke, Sir George Hayter, who did the illustrations for Hortus ericaeus, made reference to Sinclair as having shown him around the greenhouse and parterres and selecting the specimens to be illustrated. In order to find the best possible growing conditions for the collection of heaths Sinclair began collecting different types of heath soils and analysing their constituents. After several years of systematic investigation he concluded that they were made up mainly of humus, which derived from decayed leaves, and sand. He also collected calcareous

Calcareous

Calcareous is an adjective meaning mostly or partly composed of calcium carbonate, in other words, containing lime or being chalky. The term is used in a wide variety of scientific disciplines.-In zoology:...

 soils from around Luton

Luton

Luton is a large town and unitary authority of Bedfordshire, England, 30 miles north of London. Luton and its near neighbours, Dunstable and Houghton Regis, form the Luton/Dunstable Urban Area with a population of about 250,000....

 and Dunstable

Dunstable

Dunstable is a market town and civil parish located in Bedfordshire, England. It lies on the eastward tail spurs of the Chiltern Hills, 30 miles north of London. These geographical features form several steep chalk escarpments most noticeable when approaching Dunstable from the north.-Etymology:In...

 and experimented in mixing them with various proportions of peat

Peat

Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation matter or histosol. Peat forms in wetland bogs, moors, muskegs, pocosins, mires, and peat swamp forests. Peat is harvested as an important source of fuel in certain parts of the world...

 and ashes to try and find a potting medium suitable for the more exotic specimens of heaths. However, this proved unsuccessful, and in Hortus ericaeus … he recommended a natural heath soil for the growing of different species. By now Sinclair’s brother, John, was working at Loddiges

Loddiges

The Loddiges family managed one of the most notable of the eighteenth and nineteenth century plant nurseries that traded in and introduced exotic plants, trees, shrubs, ferns, palms and orchids into European gardens....

 of Hackney where experimental work was being carried out in growing exotic species and in hybridisation. Sinclair purchased some of the Erica in the Woburn collection from here as well as personally collecting specimens from nurseries at Tooting

Tooting

Tooting is a district in south London, England, located in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is situated south south-west of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.-History:...

 (possibly William Rollison’s Springfield Nursery), New Cross

New Cross

New Cross is a district and ward of the London Borough of Lewisham, England. It is situated 4 miles south-east of Charing Cross. The ward covered by London post town and the SE 14 postcode district. New Cross is near St Johns, Telegraph Hill, Nunhead, Peckham, Brockley, Deptford and Greenwich...

, Fulham

Fulham

Fulham is an area of southwest London in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, SW6 located south west of Charing Cross. It lies on the left bank of the Thames, between Putney and Chelsea. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...

, Woking

Woking

Woking is a large town and civil parish that shares its name with the surrounding local government district, located in the west of Surrey, UK. It is part of the Greater London Urban Area and the London commuter belt, with frequent trains and a journey time of 24 minutes to Waterloo station....

, from George Whitworth of Acre House at Claxby by Normanby

Normanby Hall

Normanby Hall is a classic English mansion, located near the village of Burton-upon-Stather, north of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire.The present Hall was built in 1825–30 to the designs of Robert Smirke for Sir Robert Sheffield , whose family had lived on the site since 1539. It replaced a...

 in Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, and the Vineyard Nursery at Hammersmith

Hammersmith

Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...

, owned by James Lee and Lewis Kennedy. He also travelled to Southampton

Southampton

Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...

, where he bought hardy heaths from William Bridgewater Page, and to Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

, where he made purchases of Cape Heaths from John Miller.

Benjamin Holdich, who was editor of the Farmer’s Journal, was another acquaintance of Sinclair’s, and as he lay dying he requested that Sinclair complete and publish his unfinished Essay on weeds. Sinclair duly wrote a preface and three of the four chapters based on Holdich’s notes, and it was published in 1825. Sinclair donated the profits from the essay to Holdich’s widow and family. Later that year he wrote a paper On cultivating a collection of grasses in pleasure grounds or flower gardens which was published in the Gardener’s Magazine in 1826. In 1827 Sinclair submitted ideas for a treatise on planting to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge , founded in 1826, and wound up in 1848, was a Whiggish London organisation that published inexpensive texts intended to adapt scientific and similarly high-minded material for the rapidly expanding reading public...

, which was eventually published in 1832, and in 1828 he wrote a prize essay On the effects of bone manure on different soils for the Highland Society of Scotland. In 1829 James Forbes, Sinclair’s successor at Woburn, published Salictum Woburnense, and in the Introduction by the Duke of Bedford Sinclair was credited with having initiated the idea of creating the collection of willow

Willow

Willows, sallows, and osiers form the genus Salix, around 400 species of deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere...

s. In 1830 Sinclair wrote an article On the cultivation of the natural grasses for Baxter’s Library of Agricultural and Horticultural Knowledge, and in 1831 he wrote a preface for and made additions to the 12th edition of James Donn’s Hortus Cantabrigiensis.

In 1830 the Duke of Bedford built a new flower market at Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

, and Sinclair took up a tenancy with his partner, John Cormack, in one of the conservatories there. He also had premises at 53, Regent Street. He continued to be busy with his writing, publishing papers for the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture and the Highland Society of Scotland, and with consultancy work on practical and scientific matters that concerned arboriculture

Arboriculture

Arboriculture is the cultivation, management, and study of individual trees, shrubs, vines, and other perennial woody plants. It is both a practice and a science....

, pastures, lawns, and agricultural and horticultural chemistry. He also carried out valuations of woods and plantations.

Private life

Sinclair married Kennedy Gilmour, daughter of Thomas and Agnes Cockburn, also from the lowlands of Scotland

Scottish Lowlands

The Scottish Lowlands is a name given to the Southern half of Scotland.The area is called a' Ghalldachd in Scottish Gaelic, and the Lawlands ....

. They were married 17 September 1817 in St. James Church in Piccadilly and had three children while living at Woburn; twin sons born in 1818, one of whom was named Wriothesley, in honour of the Duke of Bedford’s son, and a daughter, Elizabeth, born in 1820. Sadly Elizabeth died in 1833, the same year as Sinclair’s father and uncle, and it is thought that these deaths caused a state of depression in Sinclair which contributed to his early death the following year. Sinclair died at New Cross on 13 March 1834 and was buried at St. Paul in Deptford on 21 March. Sinclair’s son, Finlay Duncan, died a few years later. His son, Wriothesley, studied at Pembroke College, Oxford

Pembroke College, Oxford

Pembroke College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, located in Pembroke Square. As of 2009, Pembroke had an estimated financial endowment of £44.9 million.-History:...

, but died of consumption

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 in Kensington

Kensington

Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...

 in June 1840.

Significance

In his obituary, written by J.C. Loudon

John Claudius Loudon

John Claudius Loudon was a Scottish botanist, garden and cemetery designer, author and garden magazine editor.-Background:...

 in the Gardener’s Magazine, Sinclair’s Hortus gramineus … is described as the most important work of its kind ever published; he "will hold a conspicuous station in all future times, as the introducer of a new and improved system of laying down lands in grass." Throughout the 19th century it continued to be cited as a valuable reference in the cultivation of grass. In another obituary, published in the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, C.W. Johnson wrote that Sinclair "must be classed amongst the great modern benefactors of agriculture.”

More recently, in January 2002 environmental scientists Andy Hector and Rowan Hooper wrote a paper entitled Darwin and the First Ecological Experiment. In On the Origin of Species Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

 wrote, “It has been experimentally proved that if a plot of ground be sown with one species of grass, and a similar plot be sown with several distinct genera of grasses, a greater number of plants and a greater weight of dry herbage can thus be raised.” He was in fact referring to the experiments conducted by Sinclair at Woburn Abbey. Despite some limitations Hector and Hooper described the experiments as impressive even by today’s standards and believe that they influenced the development of Darwin’s “principle of divergence” which preceded his theory of evolution by natural selection

Natural selection

Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....

. They also believe that Sinclair’s research predates all other ecological experiments that they know of.