The Plant Hunters

Dr. Toby Musgrave

Dr. Toby Musgrave is one of the UK’s leading authorities in garden history and design which has led to his passion for botany. With a degree in horticulture and a PhD in garden history, he has, since 1994 been an independent scholar, freelance television and radio presenter and consultant, author, journalist, photographer, designer and lecturer.

Toby spreads his enthusiasm for plants and garden history to a wide audience.  On screen he presented HTV’s 8-part series The Great Garden Guide, previous to which he hosted two series of Lost Gardens for Channel Four and joined the design team on ITV’s Better Gardens.  On Radio 4, Toby was conceiver of and major contributor to the 6-part landmark series, The British Garden.  He is also a regular contributor to a number of British national magazines and newspapers.

Continuing to build on 16 years of experience as a writer, he is writing his seventh book, which follows previous successes including ‘The Plant Hunters’.

‘Good God. When I consider the melancholy fate of so many of botany's votaries, I am tempted to ask whether men are in their right mind who so desperately risk life and everything else through the love of collecting plants.’  Come and discover how accurate were Carl Linnaeus’s words written in 1737, and what adventures and hardships these adventure botanists endured to bring back from the world’s remotest locations, plants that we today take for granted in our gardens.