Adjoining Swan Walk is the Apothecaries' Garden, the oldest garden of its kind in London. Sir Hans Sloane, whose name is revered in Chelsea and perpetuated in one of the principal streets, is so intimately associated with this garden that it is necessary at this point to give a short account of him. Sir Hans Sloane was born in Ireland, 1660. He began his career undistinguished by any title and without any special advantages. Very early he evinced an ardent love of natural history, and he came over while still a youth to study in London. From this time his career was one long success. When he was only twenty-seven he was selected by the Duke of Albemarle, who had been appointed Governor of Jamaica, to accompany him as his physician. About a year and a half later he returned, bringing with him a wonderful collection of dried plants.
Mr. Sloane was appointed Court physician, and after the accession of George I. he was created a Baronet. He was appointed President of the Royal Society on the death of Sir Isaac Newton in 1727. He will be remembered, however, more especially as being the founder of the British Museum. During the course of a long life he had collected a very valuable assortment of curiosities, and this he left to the nation on the payment by the executors of a sum of £20,000--less than half of what it had cost him. In 1712 he purchased the Manor of Chelsea, and when the lease of the Apothecaries' Garden ran out in 1734, he granted it to the Society perpetually on certain conditions, one of which was that they should deliver fifty dried samples of plants every year to the Royal Society until the number reached 2,000. This condition was fulfilled in 1774. Sir Hans Sloane died in 1753.
A marble statue by Rysbach in the centre of the garden commemorates him. It was erected in 1737 at a cost of nearly £300. Mr. Miller, son of a gardener employed by the Apothecaries, wrote a valuable horticultural dictionary, and a new genus of plants was named after him.
Linnæus visited the garden in 1736. Of the four cedars--the first ever brought to England--planted here in 1683, one alone survives.