Head gardener at the Netherlands estate of George Clifford, The Hartekamp, and Intendant at the Botanic Gardens of the University of Uppsala. Born in Hamburg, Germany, Dietrich Nietzel worked as a gardener in Lower Saxony and in Southampton, England, before moving to the Netherlands and meeting Clifford, a wealthy businessman with a keen interest in collecting plants at his large country estate.

Nietzel worked at the estate, The Hartekamp, at the same time as a young Carl Linnaeus was employed as Clifford's private botanist, between 1735 and 1737. After Linnaeus left, Clifford was much put out to find his gardener poached from him in 1739 when Linnaeus took over the chair of medicine at Uppsala.

Nietzel spent the rest of his life at Uppsala University, where the gardens went from strength to strength under his care. Linnaeus was able to publish a list of 3,000 plants in cultivation there thanks to the good work of Nietzel. After Nietzel's death in 1756 the gardens went into decline. In the herbarium of the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, there are several specimens taken from the gardens at Uppsala, with the collector stated as Nietzel. Some of these are Linnean type specimens.

Sources:
J.H. Barnhart, 1965, Biographical Notes Upon Botanists, 3: 5
W. Blunt, 1971, The Compleat Naturalist: A Life of Linnaeus: 148
B.D. Jackson, 1915, "Dietrich Nietzel", Gardeners' Chronicle, ser. 3 (57): 353-354.