When quizzed by The New York Times about how long she planned to stay in the music business, Taylor Swift replied, "When I’m in my fifties, I kind of think I’ll want to be in a garden." Most people think about gardens in a similar way to Taylor Swift. Somewhere to escape the slings and arrows of everyday life. Havens of tranquility where danger and threat have no place.
But these fragrant sanctuaries conceal exhilarating secrets. Take a seat in an average garden, and you are likely to find yourself surrounded by monuments to deadly peril and nerve-shredding courage. Because the chances are that the commonplace plants around you—camellias, jasmines, lupins—will be descended from blooms once considered so exotic that brave adventurers would risk, and sometimes forfeit, their lives to find them.
Plant hunters have been around since time immemorial—there are Ancient Egyptian annals detailing a
