Loudon, the great English landscape gardener, was a man possessed of an extraordinary working power. The son of a farmer near Edinburgh, he was early inured to work. His skill in drawing plans and making sketches of scenery, induced his father to train him for a landscape gardener. During his apprenticeship, he sat up two whole nights every week to study; yet he worked harder during the day than any fellow-laborer. During his studious hours he learned French, and, before he was eighteen, translated a life of Abelard for an Encyclopaedia. He was so eager to make progress in life, that when only twenty, while working as a gardener in England, he wrote down in his Note-Book : "I am now twenty years of age, and perhaps a third of my life has passed away, and yet what have I done to benefit my fellow man?" An unusual reflection for a youth of only twenty. From French he proceeded to learn German, and rapidly mastered that language. He now took a large farm for the purpose of introducing Scotch improvements in the art of agriculture, and soon succeeded in realizing a considerable income.

The Continent being thrown open on the cessation of the war, he proceeded to travel for the purpose of observation, making sketches of the system of gardening in all countries, which he afterwards introduced in the historical part of his laborious "Encyclopaedia of Gardening." He twice repeated his journeys abroad for a similar purpose, the results of which appeared in his Encyclopaedias - perhaps amongst the most remarkable works of this kind, and distinguished for the immense mass of useful matters which they contain, all collected by dint of persevering industry and labor, such as has rarely been equaled.