Cover title.

John (or Thomas?) Ludlow had been a solicitor in London, with the business address of 4 Monument Yard. At some point Ludlow retired to a property in Thames Ditton, Surrey, where he then devoted his leisure time to gardening. Ludlow appears to have been a member of the Horticultural Society of London, traveling from Surrey to attend meetings, and corresponding and exchanging seeds and cuttings with Society members.

The first [43] pages of this manuscript appear to have served as Ludlow's legal register, with the first entry dated January 18, 1779 and the last detailed entry, on page [39], dated January 22, [1781]. The final page of legal entries bears the title: Cause book commencing Trinity term 1787.

The Garden register book (pages [45]-[233] of the manuscript) begins: "Rough garden register commencing Spring 1817," and continues for 189 pages, with the final entry dated 1824, "Seeds sown in the garden in March." Entries detail Ludlow's gardening experiments, especially with planting grafts of various fruit trees. Seed packets, brief notes, and leaves of correspondence are pinned to some of the manuscript leaves. Small scraps of notes are laid in. Ludlow also copied passages from various gardening books into his register, suggesting perhaps that, while a keen grower, Ludlow may have lacked sufficient income to build a reference library. The final 127 pages of the manuscript are blank.