The Observer, 8 October 2006: In 1610, gardener John Tradescant arrived at Hatfield House, one of the largest building sites of England. His employer, Robert Cecil, the most powerful man behind the throne, wanted the gardens to be stocked with the rarest plants. It was the beginning of a career that would make Tradescant the most famous plantsman of his time. Strange Blooms traces his ascent from humble background to royal gardener, following him from Hatfield to Russia, Algiers and France, in the course of which he joined military campaigns, fought pirates and collected a vast number of curiosities.
After two decades of collecting, Tradescant opened the first public museum in England in South Lambeth, showing his rarities to anybody who could afford the sixpence entry fee. For the first time, ordinary people could see the kind of treasures that were usually hidden in the gilded cabinets of princes and aristocrats. This collection, more than anything else, illustrates how Tradescant straddled the worlds of superstition, myth and the new sciences as he displayed 'the hand of a mermaid' and 'a goose which has grown in Scotland on a tree' alongside a prism and other mathematical instruments.