Thomas Hoy (c.1750 – 1 May 1822) was an English gardener and botanist employed by the Duke of Northumberland at Syon House in Middlesex in the United Kingdom, a position he held for 40 years. Described as "an experienced botanist and able cultivator", he was a fellow of the Linnean Society of London and one of the first fellows named in the 1809 royal charter of the Horticultural Society of London. Several plant species were first formally described from specimens he grew at Syon, and Robert Brown named the plant genus Hoya in his honour.
Career Hoy was gardener at Syon House, the Middlesex seat of the Dukes of Northumberland on the River Thames opposite Kew. In 1785 the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce distributed seed of Chinese hemp and flax obtained through the East India Company, and the Duke directed that some be grown in his gardens. Hoy raised the seed on a hotbed, under glass without bottom heat, and in open ground, and reported the results in a letter from Sion House dated 9 December 1785, which the society published in its Transactions.
He became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1788, the year of its foundation, and served on its council in 1807–1808. He presented flowering plants grown at Syon to the society, from which James Edward Smith formally described several new species, including the Australian plants Acacia suaveolens, Acacia myrtifolia (both originally published in Mimosa) and Goodenia ovata, and Statice latifolia (now Limonium latifolium). Smith also described Ipomopsis inconspicua in his Exotic Botany from a plant "raised in 1793, by Mr. Thomas Hoy, F.L.S. at Sion House".
The second edition of Hortus Kewensis (1810–1813), the catalogue of plants at Kew, credits "Mr. Thomas Hoy" with introducing or cultivating six plants, including Banksia robur (1802), Begonia dichotoma (1800), Ipomopsis inconspicua (1793) and the two acacias. In 1809 he was named in the royal charter of the Horticultural Society of London as one of its first fellows and members of its first council, one of three men listed in the charter as gardeners.
Hoy also kept a weather diary recording pressure, temperature, rainfall and wind direction, usually twice a day. His observations were made at Barn Elms, Kennington and Muswell Hill from 1771 and at Syon House from July 1782 to March 1822; the volumes, which also contain observations made in Scotland by his brother J. Hoy, are held by the Met Office archive. His Syon House barometer readings from the early 1780s have been used in reconstructions of the long London daily pressure record.
Death and legacy Hoy died at Isleworth on 1 May 1822, aged 72. His headstone there, recorded in 1840, described him as "40 years gardener to the Duke of Northumberland".
Robert Brown named the genus Hoya in 1810, describing Hoy as someone "whose merits as an intelligent and successful cultivator have been long known to the botanists of this country". Hoya is at pp. 26–27; the paper was circulated separately in 1810.
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