Phil Redmond: A fitting tribute

May 23 2008 by Phil Redmond, Liverpool Daily Post

ROSCOE. The only son of the city to attract silverware this week. While a banner in the Moscow stadium declared it a Scouse free zone, conveniently overlooking that ex-Blue Rooney is still a Scouser, it seemed somehow fitting that Liverpool picked up a silver medal in Chelsea, of all places.

Perhaps not in the same category as the Champions League, but for horticulturalists the Chelsea Flower show is probably just below the World Cup.

As such it was a fantastic achievement for the City’s Parks and Environment Services, together with artist Jyll Bradley, to not only build and enter Mr Roscoe’s Garden as part of the Capital of Culture project Fragrant, but to take a silver medal on exhibiting for the first time in 30 years.

It was yet another reminder of what Liverpool has given to the world, as witnessed by the fascination and respect shown by many members of the Royal Horticultural Society who know that Liverpool’s botanic reputation predates their own and started around the same time as Kew gardens, just after the turn of the 18th Century. Yet there was more to William Roscoe than a few plants.

His name is probably now better known for the lecture series hosted by John Moores University, itself tracing its roots back to the Mechanics Institute, which Roscoe also had a hand in establishing. As he did with the libraries, galleries, museums and even the Athenaeum Club, which still houses a collection of his books.

Roscoe has been described as “the father of culture in Liverpool” not simply because of the institutions he helped create but through a willingness to support and encourage creative and artistic endeavour, as well as religious and political tolerance. In 1795 he took issue with Pitt’s anti-terrorism legislation and warned of the dangers of a surveillance society. Sound familiar?

This largely self taught and early advocate for the abolition of slavery, published pamphlets some 30 years ahead of Wilberforce and sacrificed his political career as MP for Liverpool in order to help create a better environment for Wilberforce and others to carry through the necessary legislation.

Although there is a small garden in Mount Pleasant, near the site of his birth and work, and a street named after him we should hear more about this remarkable man, as well as the legacy he left in the form of the botanic collection, still surviving with a world class reputation despite having lost a permanent home three times and not being seen by the public for nearly 20 years.

The award winning garden itself will reappear at the Bluecoat, Tatton Hall and the Southport Flower show later in the year but looking beyond 2008 perhaps it is time we did something more about the memory, and legacy, left by that father of culture, Mr Roscoe?