George Matthews

George Matthews was a pioneer horticulturalist who helped the colonists expand the range of plants in their gardens and helped them make Otago more like ‘home’. He was born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1812 and grew up on a tenant farm. When he was 18 he became an apprentice gardener for the Laird of Nethermuir. With his training complete he worked at various nurseries and gardens, including the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. In 1840 he married Eliza Pressly and went to work in Ireland where he developed a considerable reputation as a nurseryman. There he met a fellow Scot and gardener, James Gebbie, and the two men discussed their families’ future options in the colonies.

In December 1849 James Gebbie’s family arrived in Dunedin and only months later the Matthews followed them, arriving on the Lady Nugent in March 1850. The two families stayed together in North East Valley where they built a fern-tree cottage. George Matthews then purchased a quarter-acre section in Moray Place, opposite the top of Burlington Street. It was a north-facing piece of ground ideal for a nursery, sloping down toward the Octagon, sheltered from the wind and with a stream at its foot. He had successfully transported a range of plants and seeds with him from Britain. It was still too early for Dunedin to support a seedsman’s business, however, so Matthews laboured for others by day and developed his property in the evening.

In due course Matthews’ nursery began to prosper and was expanded towards Princes Street. By 1853 he was able to buy a second property in Mornington and developed a nursery there for shrubs and trees, which he called Hawthorn Hill. Hawthorn Avenue preserves its name on the site now covered with houses. The Matthews family moved to a new home there in 1870 but continued to operate the Moray Place nursery for many years. Eventually it was swallowed up by the demand for business premises in the central city and the land was sold by the Matthews family in 1911. George had died in 1884, aged 72, after a working life transforming Otago gardens with the plants he loved so well.