Building the foundations of the Backhouse nursery of York

This paper aims to fill the gap in knowledge about the Back house nursery, in the absence of any substantial archival record, by tracing its early development, showing how it built on the foundations of two earlier, regionally significant nurseries in York - Telfords and Riggs – and by exploring some thing of the plants it grew. The story begins with the land inside York’s walls, moves to Fishergate and is taken up to 1854, the point at which Backhouses consolidated all their activity on a site just outside York, in Holgate.