Joseph Van Hoorde

Van Hoorde was born in Gentbrugge on 13 September 1818, the son of a gardener. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a horticulturalist in Ghent, later going on to work in Paris.[1] In 1837 a horticultural society was founded in Mechelen, which in 1839 was granted the use of the garden of the former commandery of Pitzemburg. On 4 June 1840 the city's new botanical garden was opened to the public, with Van Hoorde as head gardener. The greenhouses, built in 1851, were to his design.[1] He died in Mechelen on 12 February 1853, holding a white camellia japonica that he had bred and with which he asked to be buried.[1] A white marble plaque in the main greenhouse of the garden is engraved with a camellia in his memory. By crossing strains he bred a dwarf araucaria imbricata.[1]