About George Clifford
Cardinal creeper, Ipomoea quamoclit.
Born into a wealthy banking family, George Clifford III used his wealth to fund a lifelong passion for plants and gardens.
George Clifford
George Clifford III was born in 1685 into a wealthy Amsterdam banking family established by his grandfather, George Clifford I, who had settled there from Lincolnshire, England, in the 1640s.
In 1709 George's father, George Clifford II (1657-1727), bought the Hartekamp, a large estate with a mansion, formal garden and conservatory, in the coastal area near the university town of Haarlem.
This garden was to become the junior Clifford's passion and the source of specimens for the herbarium now housed at the Museum.
Building a botanical wonder
Clifford had a great passion for plants, and his garden was inspired by the famous botanists of his time, such as Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1739).
An extraordinarily wealthy man and a Director of the Dutch India Company, Clifford could afford to expand the Hartekamp garden, adding a menagerie, aviary, orangery and four tropical houses. With its exotic plants and animals, it must have been a wonder of its day.
Layout of the Hartekamp Garden © The Linnean Society of London.
Plant exchanges
Specimens of newly introduced species, as well as living plants and seeds, from Virginia to the East Indies and Europe to the Cape of Good Hope, were acquired via other active collectors, including Adriaan van Royen (1705-1779, Director of the Leiden Botanic Garden) and J.F. Gronovius (1690-1762).
The Hartekamp was part of a highly active Dutch tradition of exchanging plants and herbarium specimens between gardens and the botanists who worked in them.
Unfortunately Clifford's descendants did not share his enthusiasm for the garden and in 1788, 28 years after George's death, the Hartekamp was sold.