The Arboretum Trust

Kew at Castle Howard

John Simmons VMH

'Who's Who at Kew' by Marcus Irvin showing 34 of the people who have shaped Kew's history. John Simmons shows the Princess of Wales Consrvatory.

John Simmons (b. 1937) had a long career at Kew, some 37 years (1958-1995), of which  the last 23 years were as Curator.  In this post his responsibilities were the management of the gardens at Kew and Wakehurst Place (Kew's’ country garden in Sussex) and the School of Horticulture.  He revitalised all aspects of the gardens collection, research and education work, notably bringing in a conservation base to these programmes.  He also led Wakehurst from being a little visited (6000 pa) garden to being one of the top most visited National Trust gardens and at Kew was noted for his work in achieving the restoration of its historic greenhouses;  the Palm and Temperate House, the building of the new Princess of Wales Conservatory and the previous Alpine House. Since 1997 he has acted as both director and curator to the Castle Howard Arboretum Trust in North Yorkshire and also undertakes other consultancies, mainly for arboreta.

Whilst at Kew, John Simmons worked internationally with botanic gardens around the world, providing particular advice to the Maracaibo B.G., Venezuela;  the R.B.G. Madrid; the B.G. at Las Palmas, Canary Islands; UNAM B.G., Mexico City and the Queen Sirikit Botanic Gardens in northern Thailand. He has undertaken plant collecting expeditions in the West Indies, Honduras, Iran and western China. His links with China, which started in 1977, with a Royal Society exchange fellowship with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, continue, and have involved regular return field visits to western Sichuan.

He is a Past-President and founding member of the Institute of Horticulture, Past National Chairman of the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens and a past President of NCCPG’s Norfolk Group.  For many years he served the advisory committees for the National Pinetum (Bedgebury), as Chairman, and the National Arboretum (Westonbirt) as a Member, and still serves on the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award Committee and and is a Trustee of the Stanley Smith (UK) Horticultural Trust. He is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Biology, the Institute of Horticulture and the Linnaean Society.

In 1974 he published a very successful children’s book, The Life of Plants, which was used extensively in schools in the English-speaking world and was also republished in a Spanish version 15 years later with a second edition in 1990.  Aside from regular contributions to scientific and technical publications he was Series Editor for the Kew Gardening Guides, 1987-9 and General Editor of the Kew Gardens Book of Indoor Plants, 1988. More recently (1998) he was a joint author of  The Gardens of William Morris  and in 2000, English Plants for your Garden and in 2008 his latest book Managing the Wet Garden was published.

Links to Castle Howard Arboretum.
These developed with the arboretum’s creator, James Russell (1920-1996) who discussed the Arboretum’s future with Simmons at Kew in 1980, when both men were members of the then Hillier Arboretum Advisory Committee. Also, with John Sales of the National Trust, as joint leaders of the Woody Plant Catalogue scheme, he helped to get the Castle Howard Arboretum catalogued. In 1985 the association was increased by Simmons and Russell undertaking the joint RBG Kew, Castle Howard, Chinese Academy of Sciences expedition to Guizhou in western China. An area then little known or visited by Westerners.

Because of the scientific value of the plant collections at Castle Howard Simmons worked from around 1990 to secure their future, particularly after James Russell left in 1992. This culminated in 1997 with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Castle Howard forming the Arboretum Trust. Having by then retired from Kew with other plans for his future Simmons accepted to the Hon Simon Howard’s request to become the Trust’s Curator, and he has since led the development of the Arboretum. 

Under John’s direction the arboretum moved from strength to strength, the annual number of visits increased from a few hundred to over 12,000. During this time it became apparent that in order to sustain this sort of growth and to develop an education programme a new centre was needed. John worked ceaselessly to make this possible. In March 2005 work commenced on the new centre and in May 2006 the centre opened.

About this time John decided that it was time for him to retire for the second time. In May 2007 John returned for the official opening of the centre which has been named ‘The John Simmons Centre’ in his honour. Shortly afterwards John was persuaded to return and help us develop the arboretum until a replacement curator can be found. Not an easy task, as John is a hard act to follow.