---
title: "Harold Basil Christian"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Basil_Christian"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:02:17.053150+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

After purchasing his farm, Christian constructed a house on a kopje and added a croquet lawn in front. He constructed a water garden, including a waterfall, which was popular with visitors. While the water feature appeared to flow continuously with a pump, in reality, water was brought up from a nearby stream in an ox-drawn cart and poured into a tank behind the waterfall, and the tap was opened just before visitors arrived. Spacious lawns were cleared in front of the house where Christian planned to develop a garden. He originally planted imported European alpines, inspired by the designs of the English gardeners he knew growing up on his father's farm in South Africa. However, the imported plants, which thrive in high altitudes, cooler temperatures, and generous amounts of water, were not suited to the hot, dry climate of Southern Africa.
In the center of the lawn, a large rock protruded above the ground and was unable to be removed despite much digging. In 1916, Christian's farm surveyor went to a hill close by, uprooted an Aloe cameronii, and planted it "to hide the stark appearance of this unsightly rock". When the plant flowered the next year despite no watering, Christian was so pleased that he decided to focus on gardening native African aloes instead of imported plants. From 1916 on, numerous rockeries were constructed and more and more aloes were acquired for the garden.
On 18 December 1920, Christian married Annabella Roberta Kemp Saint, a Scottish woman. Their marriage was held at the Cathedral of St Mary and All Saints in Salisbury, and was solemnized by Bishop William Carter of the Anglican Diocese of Cape Town. They had a short, difficult marriage, and in September 1923, they signed a separation agreement. She moved back to Scotland and died in 1955.
In addition to gardening, which began as a hobby, Christian was an active farmer and leading figure in the Rhodesian agriculture community. He was involved in starting a maize-growing competition in Mashonaland in which farmers competed to grow the most maize on one acre. He was often chosen to judge maize competitions. He was also instrumental in encouraging Rhodesian farmers to use fertilizer and better irrigation. He served as President of the Rhodesian Agricultural Union (today the Commercial Farmers' Union) from 1929 to 1931.

=== Cultivation and study of aloe ===
By the 1920s, Christian spent increasing amounts of time focusing on his garden. In the 1930s, he began traveling throughout Rhodesia and South Africa, searching for new varieties of aloe for his garden. He diligently collected, identified, cultivated, studied, and photographed different species, and published his research. In 1937, he journeyed throughout eastern Rhodesia, and the following year, he traveled to Nyasaland (today Malawi) to study the aloes there. From 1933 to 1952, he published articles and papers in various periodicals, and several were published posthumously. In 1933, he published his first article, "Notes on African Aloes," in the Rhodesian Agricultural Journal. In it, he advocated for the use of aloes as decorative plants due to their perennial nature, and requirement of little water.
Christian, and Gilbert W. Reynolds, South African optometrist, were the two foremost aloe enthusiasts at the time. Reynolds' study of aloe began in 1930, and in 1933, a friend in Port Elizabeth arranged for them to meet. They met for breakfast at the King Edward Hotel in Port Elizabeth, where they were both so engaged that neither man touched his food. The outcome of that first meeting was that the two decided that Christian would focus on aloes growing above the Limpopo River, while Reynolds would concentrate on aloes occurring south of the river.
In 1937 his right arm was amputated above the elbow, a consequence of a modest injury that did not heal properly. His disability forced him to give up other hobbies and focus almost entirely on gardening. In addition to aloes, he also had an interest in Barberton daisies. For the next decade and half, Christian spent much time preparing a book on tropical African aloe species. He filled several large leather-bound notebooks and plant registers with the fruits of his studies, but the idea of a book ultimately did not come about.
In mid-1939, Gilbert Reynolds visited Ewanrigg Farm. He published a detail description of his visit in the South African Horticultural Journal, in which he noted the rockeries, pools, and the prevalence of Aloe cameronii, which were in bloom at the time of his visit. He called the gardens "the finest and most complete collection of Aloes in existence". 

Christian's growing reputation as an expert on the aloe genus, as well as requests to botanists at Kew Gardens in London and the South African Division of Botany in Pretoria, meant that crates and packages of aloes arrived at Ewanrigg with frequency. Upon arrival, they aloes were recorded and planted, and when they bloomed, their flowers were described and the descriptions were published. With the help of Inez Clare Verdoorn, they recorded 28 previously unidentified species. By the early 1940s, the gardens had been expanded to seven acres, and had earned an international reputation. Christian was by now seen as a top expert on aloe and on African aloes in particular. Governors of Southern Rhodesia were often invited to visit. The Minister of Internal Affairs declared the garden national monument in 1943.
During his later years, Christian continued to cultivate aloes but also began collecting and propagating cycads and other genera. He developed an extensive collection of African cycads, and nearly all species of the genus Encephalartos could be found at Ewanrigg. In 1947, he went on a thorough cycad tour of South Africa with Inez Clare Verdoorn and others, where they traveled from the Transvaal through Natal and examined all known localities of encephalartos. In addition to cycads, he was interested in euphorbia. In the 1941 book Succulent Euphorbieae of Southern Africa, Christian is listed in the acknowledgements, and several of his photographs were used in the book.