Kew Gardens Photography Holdings

He was demonstrator and later Lecturer in Botany at Cambridge from 1899-1907. Assistant Director at Kew 1907-1922 and Director 1922-1941.

Photographs of Nigeria, Cameroon, Tanzania and Dominica. These show trees and indigenous people.

He was a Kew Gardener from 1893 to 1895 and later became Curator of the St Lucia Botanic Station in 1895. He was Agricultural Superintendent from 1898 to 1914 and Superintendent of Agriculture, Grenada 1914-1919.

One small photograph album of St Lucia Botanic Station. A detailed list of each photograph exists, and the photographs are also annotated.

Gardener at Clarence Elliott’s Six Hills Nursery, Stevenage, 1926. He designed and planted a number of gardens, including the rock Garden at Exbury. He collected plants in Persia in 1932, Turkey 1933-1935, Morocco in 1936, Greece in 1937 and Mexico in 1938. Hewas sent by the Imperial Agricultural Bureau to South America in 1939 to collect plants including wild and cultivated potatoes. He discovered new species of plants including Verbascum and Verbena ballsii. He worked as a Horticulturalist in Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden, California from 1949-1960. He finally returned to Yorkshire in 1978. His photographic collection consists of photograph albums, taken during his various expeditions between 1932-1939.

Volume of field notes with annotated photographs for the period Dec 1938-Sep 1939, covering Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, showing people, landscapes, vegetation and architecture. Contains also a detailed list of the photographs at the front of the volume.

Dec 1938-Sep 1939

Sir Arthur William Hill (1875-1941)

Demonstrator and later Lecturer in Botany at Cambridge from 1899-1907. Assistant Director at Kew 1907-1922 and Director 1922-1941.

He collected plants in Panama and Ecuador in the 1910s. • File containing photographs of orchids with sketches to aid identification, collected in Panama and Ecuador in the 1910s. Contains also other documents such as correspondence and list of orchids collected.

Ridley read Natural Sciences at Exeter College, Oxford. He obtained a botany position at the British Museum and worked under Carruthers on Monocotyledons., Orchidaceae and British plants and insects. His first (documented) foreign trip was to the Island of Fernando de Noronha, about which he published papers on; its geology; its botany; and its status as a convict island. In 1888 he was appointed as Director of Gardens and Forests for the Straits Settlements based in Singapore this also incorporated Malay. He spent his time writing and publishing, travelling and bringing back specimens for the Herbarium in Singapore and contributing to the herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. He had a specific interest in economic botany and in particular in the development of Malaysian rubber or Hevea brasiliensis; this resulted in his starting a plantation in Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

The son of James Comber (1866-1953), who was a Gardener at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. He was himself Gardener to H J Elwes at Colesborne. He collected plants in Argentina, Chile and Peru (1925-1927); also in Tasmania (1929-1930). He hybridised lilies for Jan de Graff nursery, Oregon. • Photographs of his expedition in South America, Argentina, Chile and the Andes showing mainly plants and landscapes (1920s). The photographs bear a red number on the reverse, which refers to the corresponding number in a notebook containing descriptions, including plant names where relevant, for each photograph.