‘Royal’ gardener Kirkham at Quarryhill

If there's one thing the English are 'leaving' these days, it's their renowned love of gardening. And some very special 'green fingers' will be on hand at Quarryhill Botanical Garden next week, when Tony Kirkham – director of the royal Kew Garden – speaks at the Glen Ellen plant sanctuary on Saturday, July 23 at 5:30 p.m.

The lecture will focus on English plant collector Ernest Henry Wilson's work in China, tracing this most renowned Asian expeditions between 1899 and 1910.

According to Quarryhill officials, Wilson took several thousand glass plate images over his lifetime of travels in the Far East, many documenting the landscape of Western China at that time.

Shortly after graduating with honors from a three-year diploma course at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kirkham managed its North Arboretum for 14 years before becoming the Assistant Curator in 1992. Today, he heads the Arboretum, Gardens and Horticultural Services at Kew, one of the most prestigious botanical gardens in the world.

According to a Quarryhill press release about the lecture, Kirkham has lead numerous plant-collecting expeditions (including several with Quarryhill), wrote and published books, and has been featured in the multi-year BBC series 'A Year at Kew' and, in 2006-08, filmed two of his own multi-part series, 'Trees that made Britain.'

In 2006, Kirkham visited China accompanied by fellow plantsman, the late Mark Flanagan. They retraced Wilson's footsteps to find the exact locations where Wilson had taken some of his more detailed photographs, and rephotographed many landscape images and special interest trees.

Next weekend's lecture will take participants on a journey through China by presenting 'then and now' images, while discussing many of the same species growing in Quarryhill's garden today that Wilson saw and collected.

This is the second installment of the three-part Peter H. Raven summer lecture series.

To sign up for this and/or the final talk of the three-part series, with speaker Paul R. Ehrlich, author of the best-selling book, 'The Population Bomb,' visit quarryhillbg.org. $25 for members, $35 non-members.

Quarryhill Botanical Garden is at 12841 Sonoma Highway, Glen Ellen.