John Veitch

John Veitch was born October 1752 in Ancrum, he was the eldest of five children, his parents were Thomas and Mary Veitch. He grew up helping his father manage the woodlands on the estate of Ancrum House. He then worked in a nursery in nearby Hassendean with Lees.  Later he was apprenticed at Robert Dickson & Son, Scotland’s leading nursery, which had developed gradually during the preceding twenty years to specialise in forest trees. 

Like many other Scots Veitch then headed south to England, by managing to transfer his apprenticeship to the celebrated Vineyard Nursery in Hammersmith run by Kennedy & Lee. He had a wage of eight shillings a week. This was a great success because James Lee, recommended him to Sir Thomas Dyke Acland the 7th Baronet, from Killerton house, Broadclyst.  So, it was in 1772 that the young 20-year-old Scot moved to Devon to take up employment with Sir Thomas and they worked together until Sir Thomas’s death. As well as making the most of the superb natural features at Killerton, Veitch had paths and borders added and made full use of the gentle south facing slope and sheltered aspect. The Baronet must have been impressed with Veitch’s early work because, in order to persuade him to stay in the longer term, he offered him not only financial support but also estate land at Budlake to develop his own nursery business, and later to act as a landscape designer.  Even more surprising, but very astutely, Sir Thomas appointed him land agent for all of his extensive Westcountry properties and presumably must have encouraged him to marry and start a family which was still rare at a time when many staff were expected to remain single and thus ‘loyal’ to their employer.  John and his wife, Anna Davidson, had six children, including James, who helped his father on the Killerton estate from a very early age.  As a consequence of Sir Thomas’s kindness, Veitch remained linked to the Aclands and to Killerton, giving himself a secure base and effectively a grand trial ground, whilst the Aclands retained the services of the man who was to become one of the top-ranking nurserymen of his day.  

Apart from working on his own account Veitch worked with other designers, even if only to supply them with plants. He is known to have worked with Repton on several occasions including at Luscombe castle and it may have been from Repton that he got some of his ideas for Killerton. He got others from Capability Brown, having been sent by Sir Thomas to see him at work at Saltram.             

Sir Thomas died in 1785, and work on Killerton House had fallen into abeyance. Veitch carried on his flourishing business as a landscape consultant and tree contractor, and in 1800, he became firmly established as a nurseryman following an order for trees to the value of £1,212. These were for Luscombe Castle where the renowned landscaper Humphry Repton was undertaking a major replanting of the main valley area.                                                                                                                                                                                                      

As the nursery business expanded, Veitch rented more land in 1810 before moving the operation to larger premises at Mount Radford, Exeter, in 1832. He was soon succeeded in the business by his son, James and grandson James junior, with James taking over the Exeter nursery, while James junior was sent to London to train there for two years as a nurseryman, before returning to Exeter, where he helped his father improve and expand the Exeter nursery, before acquiring premises in Chelsea, London.                     

John Veitch remained at Budlake and spent some time running the nursery with another son, Thomas. As the Budlake venture closed other land purchases were made including, in 1836, a 7-acre (28,000 m2) site at Broadclyst Heath called "Brockhill" to hold the majority of the tree stock from Budlake and in 1838 11 acres (0.045 km 2) were purchased at Haldon for ornamentals. John Veitch entered retirement at Killerton aged 85 years and died there in 1839.