Landscape gardener, botanist and plant collector Robert Proudlock was born in Hepscott Moor, Northumberland. After training as a gardener in a local nursery he was employed at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1883, and then at Kew from 1886-1889, where he tended to tropical plants in the glasshouses.

Having gained knowledge of exotic flora in the Kew glasshouses, Proudlock went on to be appointed Assistant Curator at the Royal Botanic Gardens of Calcutta, where he remained for seven years, being promoted to Curator in 1891. He spent part of 1892 collecting plants in Lower Burma (Myanmar) and from 1896 was curator at the Botanic Gardens of Ootacamund, southern India, which served as his base for collecting expeditions in the Nilgiri Hills on behalf of the Botanical Survey of India. He returned to Burma in 1908 in order to design landscaped areas in Rangoon.

In 1909 Proudlock was appointed a government advisor for East-Bengal-Assam, being assigned the task of landscaping the Ramna area. He retired from Indian Government Service in 1918 and returned to Britain, where he continued his botanical research, for example collecting plants in Iceland in 1934 and later in Jersey, where he died in 1948. He re-visited India several times during his retirement.

Sources:
1936, Journal of the Kew Guild, 1936: 501-503
1948, ibid, 1948: 690-690.