In this beautifully illustrated talk Andrea Wulf tells the story of a small group of 18th century naturalists that made England a nation of gardeners. It’s the story of a garden revolution that began in America when the farmer John Bartram sent hundreds of boxes filled with seeds that would transform the English landscape forever. There is also the London cloth merchant Peter Collinson who distributed Bartram’s seeds; Philip Miller, author of the Gardeners Dictionary, the cantankerous Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, and Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander who joined Captain Cook’s Endeavour on the greatest voyage of discovery of modern times. Together they introduced the lustrous evergreens, fiery autumn foliage and colourful shrubs that shaped the Georgian landscape; they brought science and rational thought to horticulture; and risked their lives to find new exotic blooms and towering trees. Friends, rivals, enemies, their correspondence, collaborations and squabbles make for a riveting human drama set against the backdrop of the emerging British empire and America’s magnificent forests. As botany and horticulture became a science, the garden became the Eden for everyman.