Ambrose Christian Congreve

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(14 April 1907 – 28 May 2011) was an Irish industrialist, best known for his world-famous garden at Mount Congreve.

Early life

He was the son of Major John Congreve and Lady Helena Ponsonby, the daughter of the 8th Earl of Bessborough. He was educated at Eton and

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

. Childhood visits to the Rothschild estate at

Exbury Exbury is a village in Hampshire, England. It is in the civil parish of Exbury and Lepe. It lies just in the New Forest, near the Beaulieu River and about a mile from the Solent coast. It is best known as the location of Exbury House, built by ...

inspired a lifelong love of gardening.

Business career

In 1927, Congreve joined

Unilever Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy dri ...

, working in England and in China. From 1939, he took over the running of Humphreys & Glasgow, the gasworks manufacturers and petrochemical engineers. Dr Arthur Glasgow, his father-in-law, was a co-founder of the firm. He remained there until 1983, when the company was sold to an American concern. However, his abiding passion was gardening, especially at Mount Congreve, near

Kilmeaden Kilmeadan or Kilmeaden () is a village in County Waterford, Ireland. It is on the R680 regional road. The town is from Dungarvan and from Waterford. Kilmeadan Castle was a stronghold of the le Poer family in the fourteenth century. In th ...

, County Waterford.

Mount Congreve house and gardens

Mount Congreve gardens (supplemental ^3) - geograph

The Mount Congreve estate lies just outside the village of Kilmeadan. It is famous the world over for its rare species of plants and also its plant nurseries. It consists of around seventy acres of intensively planted

woodland garden A woodland garden is a garden or section of a garden that includes large trees and is laid out so as to appear as more or less natural woodland, though it is often actually an artificial creation. Typically it includes plantings of flowering shru ...

and a four-acre

walled garden A walled garden is a garden enclosed by high walls, especially when this is done for horticultural rather than security purposes, although originally all gardens may have been enclosed for protection from animal or human intruders. In temperate ...

. In addition there are an 18th-century house (the ancestral home of Ambrose Congreve), ranges of glasshouses, more than 16 miles of paths and a wholesale nursery. Congreve was dedicated to maintaining the historic gardens at his family's estate. He won 13 Gold Medal awards at the Chelsea Garden Show in London for this garden. In 1987 he was awarded a

Veitch Memorial Medal The Veitch Memorial Medal is an international prize issued annually by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). Goal The prize is awarded to "persons of any nationality who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement and improvement o ...

by the

Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr (Nor ...

, and in 2001 a Gold Medal (for a Great Garden of the World) by the Botanic Gardens in Boston, Massachusetts. After Congreve's death, aged 104 years, the Mount Congreve estate was left to the Irish State.

Personal life

He married Margaret Glasgow in 1935. The couple divided their time between two homes, Mount Congreve in Ireland and Winkfield Manor in Berkshire, England. He was appointed

in 1965.

References

* Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). ''Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage'' (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990. 1907 births 2011 deaths People educated at Eton College Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Irish centenarians Irish businesspeople Irish gardeners Men centenarians People from County Waterford {{Ireland-business-bio-stub