John Shepherd 

John Shepherd (1764-1836) came to Liverpool from Manchester, where he had been working as a horticulturalist. He was a close friend of Dr. John Bostock (see letter 119) and William Roscoe. In 1800, Dr. James Currie (1756-1805) and Dr. John Rutter, along with Roscoe and Bostock, formed a committee for establishing the Liverpool Botanic Gardens, and in 1803 the Garden officially opened, with Roscoe as president and Shepherd as curator. Widely known as an expert cultivator, Shepherd would remain curator until his death in 1836. The Liverpool Botanic Gardens became a model emulated from Philadelphia to St. Petersburg.  Shepherd and William Carey corresponded for over 20 years, exchanging plants on a regular basis. “By 1820,” Stanfield argues in his book on the Liverpool museums, “Carey had made large contributions to the Botanic Garden. Carey and Roscoe were also friends and exchanged plants.” At one point (c. 1820) Shepherd sent Carey over 1000 grafted fruit trees, all of which survived. The Garden also contains collections sent by William Roxburgh (1751-1815), another friend of Carey. F. A. Cox quotes from a paper by Jonathan Carey, appended to Eustace Carey’s Memoir of William Carey, in which Jonathan writes of his father’s passion for plants:  “In objects of nature, my father was exceedingly curious. His collection of mineral ores and other subjects of natural history, was extensive, and obtained his particular attention in seasons of leisure and recreation. The science of botany was his constant delight and study; and his fondness for his garden remained to the last. No one was allowed to interfere in the arrangements of this his favourite retreat, and it is here he enjoyed his most pleasant moments of secret devotion and meditation. The garden formed the best and rarest collection of plants in the east, to the extension of which, by his correspondence with persons of eminence in Europe and other parts of the world, his attention was constantly directed; and in return, he supplied his correspondents with rare collections from the east. On this science he frequently gave lectures, which were well attended, and never failed to prove interesting. His publication of ‘Roxburgh’s Flora Indica’ is a standard work with botanists.” See Stanfield, Handbook, 39; Cox, History, 1:377; Annie Lee, “John Shepherd,” Lancashire and Cheshire Naturalist 17 (1925), 157-160, 198-200; Farrer, William Carey: Missionary and Botanist, 91.