Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort

http://www.cyberancestors.com/cummins/ps110/ps110_358.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Capell

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=79189445

http://histfam.familysearch.org/getperson.php?personID=I62154&tree=...

http://thepeerage.com/p1378.htm#i13776

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from Gardening Women by Catherine Horwood 2010

pp11

"Mary grew up surrounded by garden lovers; her eldest brother, Arthur, later Earl of Essex, had a passion for trees and, in consultation with John Evelyn, created what was probably the first 'wooded' garden in the country at Cassiobury in Hertfordshire. ... Another brother, Sir Henry Capel, built what may have been the first conservatory in Britain in the late 1670's at his gardens in Kew, on the site that was to become the Royal Botanic Gardens, and he was certainly a source of seeds for his sister"

She had a collection of plants running into thousands, and she kept detailed records of them all. Her contribution to late 17th Century British horticulture was inestimable. She cultivated extensive gardens at Badminton, north of Bath, and Beaufort House in London.

She corresponded regularly with Sir Hans Sloane, and was later to bequeath to him the 12 albums of her herbarium - dried and preserved specimens - volumes now in the British Museum's natural history Collection.

She is commemorated by Beaufortia decussata - an exotic variety of Australian Myrtle named for her in 1812 by Robert Brown, plant explorer and botanist-librarian to Sir Joseph Banks.