11/07/2026
IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE FREE GARDENERS 🌿
The history of Free Gardeners originated thousands of years ago in the vineyards and gardens of King Solomon's newly built temple on Mount Zion.
As the work completed, the operative Gardeners went in search for new employment, where they were often helped by fellow Gardeners whom they encountered on their travels.
Over time, a bonded fellowship developed that enabled members to rely on other members for protection, assistance and benevolence. They became the Order of Free Gardeners.
In the 19th century this fellowship morphed into a concept known as Friendly Societies. The Grand United Order of Free Gardeners Friendly Society provided medical, funeral benefits, and loans for educational or housing expenses as well as providing a Fraternal Lodge for like minded men. During this time the Order were able to help thousands of families throughout the turn of the century, the Great Depression, two world wars and into the 21st century.
In 2006 the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority removed all of their financial responsibilities.
Even after the closure of the Friendly Society, the strength of the friendships and brotherhood made at the Victorian Lodge No. 1 continued, and today remains the only Free Gardeners Lodge in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere. The year 2014 marks a milestone in the Orders history in celebrating 150 years of Free Gardenry in Australia.
The Victorian Lodge No. 1 meets on the 2nd Wednesday of the month (January excluded) at the Box Hill Masonic Center, 1013 Whitehorse Rd, Box Hill, Victoria, Australia.
Membership is open to men who are 21 years or older, who are permanent Australian residents, residing in Victoria. Further requirements to join are obtainable from the Grand Secretary.
Free Gardeners are law abiding citizens who enjoy the friendship and sense of belonging offered by community of like minded individuals. If you are interested in joining the Grand United Order of Free Gardeners, making new friends, and in doing so preserving Australia's fraternal history, expressions of interest are welcome by contacting the Grand Secretary.
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Nobody now knows when gardeners in the Lothians and Fife began to organise. The earliest surviving records come from Haddington (1676) and Dunfermline (1715). There has always been a general need amongst working men to secure sickness benefits, pensions and provision for their dependants. So both societies may be even older.
In cities and burghs (towns) there medieval trades incorporations. Incorporations had contracts between themselves and the town or city council as representatives of the community. Each stated the prerogatives of the craft, membership qualifications and how they were to organise. The Incorporation of Gardeners of Glasgow is believed to be only such group in Scotland to gain that status. The gardeners and greengrocers had become an incorporation of the city by 1626. Nowhere else had a gardeners' incorporation and by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries incorporations had ceased to be created.
List of founder members, the Ancient Society of Gardeners in and about Dunfermline Some newly arising trades were adopted by existing incorporations. In common with other professions gardeners organised because they felt a pressure to regulate skills and training to protect their own reputations. But gardeners in particular lived outside burghs on nearby landed estates or market gardens and so could not become burgesses, the essential qualification to join incorporations. Gardeners' societies had been long established in Europe. Scotland's North Sea trading links may have helped spread the idea in the eastern lowlands. Further, there was an established alternative that could be adopted by gardeners. They could organise as a 'fraternity' or 'society'.
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Free Gardeners of the Lothians and Fife
Gardeners' societies appeared in Scotland during the seventeenth century. Working gardeners started societies to promote and regulate their profession and to support themselves in time of need. As time passed the main aim became the members' benefits - they were friendly societies.
Non-gardeners could join most lodges. They were called 'free gardeners' and soon they out-numbered working gardeners. All through the 19th century free gardeners continued to found lodges despite the attractions of the many other friendly societies, such as the Foresters, Buffaloes or Oddfellows. Free gardeners made up their own rituals and practices, which helped unite the brethren of each lodge.
Some of the societies joined together in 'Orders' led by a 'Grand Lodge'. There were several orders based in Edinburgh, Glasgow and England. Some of the older lodges stayed independent. At their height in the Lothians there were over 10,000 free gardeners organised in upwards of 50 lodges. Juvenile and even women-only branches opened at the end of the 19th century.
The free gardeners are now part of history. Some of the societies are known only by name. Many different collections hold a few surviving documents or pieces of regalia. Luckily, the archives of the Dunfermline and Haddington bodies have been preserved. The resources on this website have been collected from many different institutions and collections across the Lothians and Fife. We hope that the seed planted here will grow and inspire others to unearth the history of the movement.
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Comparisons with Freemasonry
In the 1720s, Scotland had a profusion of societies, fraternities, and clubs. Freemasonry and the Order of Free Gardeners are merely those that spread the furthest and lasted the longest.
Those two orders present important similarities concerning their organisation and development. Both were born in Scotland in the middle of the 17th Century among groups of professional workers who very quickly accepted members from other professions. In both cases, members of the original profession became minorities from the beginning of the 18th Century. In both orders also, certain lodges open very rapidly to 'accepted' members and in particular to the local nobility, whereas others, like that of Haddington for the Free Gardeners and that of Edinburgh for the Freemasons, are more reticent.
Almost all known members who belonged to the two orders were Free Gardeners before becoming Freemasons. The largest group of Free Gardeners who later became Freemasons joined the Kilwinning Scots Arms Masonic lodge founded in 1729. There were nine members of the free gardeners Dunfermline lodge. None of them were gardeners by trade, they were aristocrats and soldiers.
Freemasonry expanded rapidly in England and, after creation of the Grand Lodge in London in 1717, across the entire world. On the other hand, the Order of Free Gardeners remained principally Scottish. In both cases, the Scottish lodges seemed to have difficulties grouping together into larger structures called Grand Lodges. In the case of the Order of Free Gardeners, the first Grand Lodge only formed in 1849, and 15 lodges remained independent until the disappearance of the order. In both cases, it is in particular the lodges founded before their Grand Lodge that remain the most reluctant to renounce their independence.
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Garden of Eden
A conference of 1873 indicates that Free Gardening used the cultivation of soil as the symbol of the nurturing of the spirit in intelligence and virtue and made reference to the Garden of Eden.
The admission ritual of the Free Gardeners' apprentices shows many similarities to that of Freemason apprentices. Adam could thus symbolically be the first Free Gardener. Use is made of the compass and the square, to which is added the knife, presented as 'the simplest tool of gardening', allowing 'pruning the vices and propagating virtues by cuttings'. At the end of this ceremony, the apprentice received the apron of his grade.
The second degree made reference to Noah, the 'second Gardener' and made the Companion symbolically accomplish a voyage that led him towards the Garden of Eden then towards that of Gethsemane.
The third degree made reference to Solomon, the 'third Gardener', and to the symbol of the olive tree.
The aprons are of two types:
Long aprons, reaching the ankle, embroidered with numerous symbols relating to the legends of the order.
Shorter aprons, with a semi-circular bib, strongly resembling the aprons of the Freemasons of Scotland. That of the president is embroidered with the letters P, G, H, E, initials of Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel (Tigris) and Euphrates (the four rivers of the Garden of Eden) and A, N, S, initials of Adam, Noah and Solomon, to which is added the letter O, probably for 'Olive'.
Generally, the symbolism utilized by the Free Gardeners seems to have been strongly influenced during the 19th Century by that of Freemasonry.
On numerous objects of the order dating from the very beginning of the 20th Century, one finds an emblem composed of a square, a compass and a grafting knife. As there is not a trace of this emblem in the earlier documents, it is probable that it had also been inspired lately by that of Freemasonry.
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The first members
There is little information on the professions of the members before the end of the 17th Century. During this period the Haddington lodge included merchants, tailors and clerks as well as gardeners. All the members of the lodge were originally from the county. On the other hand, the lodge at Dunfermline, former capital of Scotland, prided itself on counting among its members 'numerous renowned persons of Edinburgh, as well as East Lothian including the Marquess of Tweeddale, the count of Haddington (Earl of Haddington), Lord William Hay etc.'.
The first record of the Dunfermline lodge was established in 1716 with the signatures of 214 members. At this time the membership was composed of a majority of gardeners by trade, but also numerous artisans and two members of the local aristocracy. Rapidly, the membership grew and the social level rose—to the point that the professional gardeners no longer formed the majority of new members—but the recruitment remained local. In 1721, 101 new members of all social statuses were admitted into the lodge, from gardeners and butchers to the Duke of Atholl. The following years saw a fairly large number of aristocrats initiated in Free Gardening in the Dunfermline lodge, even while they remain on the edge of the Haddington lodge, which remains mainly active. Most of these people possess famous gardens. Starting from 1736, the date of the creation of the (Masonic) Grand Lodge of Scotland, this tendency ceased and there were no more initiations of aristocrats in the Dunfermline lodge.
Religiously, all the members of this time were Protestants and belonged to the Church of Scotland. Politically, on the other hand, there were all types.
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Ritual
Fraternity documents from the end of the 17th century reveal no trace of secret knowledge or rituals. However, the interest rapidly shown by the members of the aristocracy suggests this association did not exclusively deal with mutual assurance.
The oldest known mention of the existence of an initiation secret in this order appears on 28 January 1726, when the fraternity studied an internal complaint that accused one of its members of defaming certain of its officers in saying they could not correctly give its words and signs. In 1772, other documents established that the fraternity of the Free Gardeners had 'Words' and 'Secrets'. An 1848 document mentions a teaching, in the form of 'Signs, Secrets and Grips'. Historians have at their disposal complete rituals of the Apprentice, Companion and Master dating from 1930. Minutes of the lodges show that the ritual of the order progressively developed, from a fairly basic ceremony of transmission of the 'Word' at its very beginnings, to a system of three grades similar to that of Freemasonry at the end of the 19th Century.
