Description
Fairchild, David. The World Was My Garden: Travels of a Plant Explorer. (New York and London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939)
Large Octavo. xiv, 494 pages, profusely illustrated with photographs. Hardcover. Boards covered in a blue-green linen weave cloth stamped in silver on front cover and spine strip.
Condition: Near fine, no DJ. Some notes on first and last free endpaper in light pencil, mostly a book dealer’s pricing notes from years ago. Cover is bright and crisp with no sunning or fading.
“David Grandison Fairchild (April 7, 1869 – August 6, 1954) was an American botanist and plant explorer. Fairchild was responsible for the introduction of more than 200,000 exotic plants and varieties of established crops into the United States, including soybeans, pistachios, mangos, nectarines, dates, bamboos, and flowering cherries. Certain varieties of wheat, cotton, and rice became especially economically important.
“For many years Fairchild managed the Office of Seed and Plant Introduction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. One accomplishment was to help introduce the cherry trees from Japan to Washington. He is also credited with introducing kale, quinoa and avocados to Americans. In 1898 he established the introduction garden for tropical plants in Miami, Florida. In 1905 he married Marian, younger daughter of Alexander Graham Bell. Fairchild was a member of the board of trustees of the National Geographic Society, and an officer in what is now called the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
“In 1926, the Fairchilds built a home on an 8-acre (32,000 m2) parcel on Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove, Florida. They named it “The Kampong”, after similar family compounds in Java, Indonesia, where Fairchild had spent so many happy days collecting plants. He covered this property with an extraordinary collection of rare tropical trees and plants and eventually wrote a book about the place, entitled “The World Grows Round my Door”. In 1984, The Kampong became part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden. In 1938, he was honored by having the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables named after him.
“The World Was My Garden won a National Book Award as the Bookseller Discovery of 1938, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. The Discovery was “the most deserving book which failed to receive adequate sales and recognition”.
“Fairchild and his wife Marian wrote an early book on macro photography of insects titled Book of Monsters(Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1914). [There is a section on this included in this book.]” – Wikipedia
