Joseph Paxton's 3 August 186th birthday falls on 3 August 2016. If you've eaten a banana or walked in, perhaps even owned a greenhouse you have him to thank. "The busiest man in England" was to Queen Victoria "a common gardener's boy" -- but knighted him anyway in 1851 for designing the Great Exhibition's famed Crystal Place featuring Paxton's modular glass-and-iron design. Yet he was born 1803 the seventh son of a yeoman farmer in Bedfordshire and an apprentice gardener to his older brother. Noticed by the William Cavendish 6th Duke of Devonshire and brought to his Chatsworth Estate, he raised the banana plants named after his patron that were to become the standard commercial banana of the 20th century. He progressed to be a botanist, publisher, architect and Member of Parliament before his death in 1865. Not bad for a gardener's boy.
