British horticulturalist. Clarence Elliott was famed for his Six Hills Nursery, specialising in alpine plants. He laid out many gardens in his own style, especially rock gardens, and also carried out explorations in other countries collecting plants for his nursery as well as dried specimens.
Elliott trained with Rivers of Sawbridgeworth and Backhouse of York before spending three years growing fruit in South Africa (1902-1905). Returning to Britain, he set up his nursery near Stevenage, naming it after six burial mounds in the vicinity. Apart from South Africa and one visit to the Falklands, he did not collect plants from outside Europe until the late 1920s, when he set off with William Balfour Gourlay (who was collecting for Kew and Edinburgh botanic gardens) to South America. Together they sailed in 1927 to Valparaiso, Chile, stopping on the way at Hamilton, Havana, Panama, Callao, Arica and Antofagusto.
In Valparaiso, bunches of exquisite leucocorynes were being sold in the street. They enquired as to where they came from, and on being told they grew wild at Coquimbo, they made that their first destination and collected as many bulbs of the fragrant Glory of the Sun (Leucocoryne ixioides Lindl.) as they could. Taking the Trans-Andean railway to Rio Blanco they collected Alstroemeria before heading south to Temuco and Tierra del Fuego. They sailed home from Punto Arenas via the Falklands in 1928.
As well as ornamental plants, Elliott brought back with him an 'arkload' of animals for the London Zoo; a Galapagos turtle, a pair of pygmy deer, various birds and giant edible frogs among them. Three blue egg laying Araucana hens he brought back from Patagonia were used by R.C. Punnett at Cambridge University in genetic studies of poultry. Descendants of these breeding experiments are now used to produce pastel coloured eggs for the plate. Elliott made one more trip to South America in 1929-1930. In terms of publishing, Elliot was known for his classic work on rock gardens and revising C.A. Johns' Flowers of the Field (first edition 1907). His series 'In an English Garden' appeared in the Illustrated London News between 1951 and 1964.
