Thomas Fairchild (gardener)

Thomas Fairchild
Born	1667
Died	10 October 1729
Nationality	British
Occupation	gardener

Thomas Fairchild (? 1667 – 10 October 1729) was an English gardener, "the leading nurseryman of his day", working in London. He corresponded with Carl Linnæus, and helped by experiments to establish the existence of sex in plants, then still denied by most botanists.^[1] In 1716-17 he was the first person to scientifically produce an artificial hybrid, Dianthus Caryophyllus barbatus, known as "Fairchild's Mule", a cross between a Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) and a Carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus).^[2] He did this by taking pollen from the Sweet William with a feather, and brushing it onto the stigma of the Carnation pink. The cross was made in summer 1716, the new plant appearing the next spring.

Fairchild was somewhat disturbed by his success, as like others at the time, he regarded all plant species as created by God at the Creation, and feared the consequences of disturbing this natural order. When asked to show his dried plant to the Royal Society in 1720, he fudged the story of its creation, claiming it was an accident.^[3]

He introduced Pavia rubra or red buckeye, Cornus florida, an American flowering dogwood, and other plants.^[4] He imported some plants from the Dutch growers, but was an early participant in the wave of introductions from the eastern seaboard of British America. Eventually he "could boast that more than twenty species blossomed in his garden each December", then regarded as remarkable for England.^[5]

As a leading member of the community of scienticially-minded gardeners that was forming in London, he wrote The City Gardener (1722), contributed to A Catalogue of Trees and Shrubs both Exotic and Domestic which are propagated for Sale in the Gardens near London, and may have written the anonymous A Treatise on the Manner of Fallowing Ground, Raising of Grass Seeds, and Training Lint and Hemp. He also read a paper to the Royal Society.^[4] He was sufficiently well known that his portrait by an unknown artist has been owned by what is now the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford since the 18th century.^[6]