reliable character and stern appearance. Taller than average in height, he sported mutton-chop whiskers and a monocle during his time in public life. During the 1850s and 1860s, Ludlam's political and social activities brought him into occasional contact with the uncle of his wife—the English-born baronet and former Barbados sugar planter Sir Samuel Osborne-Gibbes. Sir Samuel (1803–1874) was a prominent Freemason and a landed proprietor at Whangarei, in the far north of New Zealand's North Island. He was a Legislative Councillor from 1855 to 1863, impressing Ludlam with the strength of his belief in noblesse oblige community service and his advocacy of high ethical standards. Ludlam became a notable landed proprietor. His holdings included real estate in Ghuznee Street, Wellington (town sections 169 and 171), and he owned a substantial riverside farm at Waiwhetū in Lower Hutt, where he ran flocks of sheep and developed a reputation as an expert in horticulture. He had purchased the Waiwhetū farm from fellow-pioneer Francis Molesworth in the mid-1840s, calling it Newry after his home town in Ireland. Ludlam built a large house at Newry in 1848, replacing the farm's first homestead. The farm also boasted an orchard, a spacious barn often used for public functions (such as an official dinner held for the governor, Sir George Grey, in 1851) and a stone windmill that Molesworth had erected in 1845. In 1860 Ludlam imported the first Romney Marsh sheep from England into New Zealand, instituting a successful ovine breeding program at a purpose-built stud at Newry. (His brother-in-law, Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes, conducted a similar Romney Marsh breeding program at his Australian sheep property, Yarralumla (the present-day site of Australia's Government House in Canberra), during this same period). Ludlam also opened a beautiful landscaped garden at Newry in 1868. He called it The Gums as a tribute to Australia's native eucalyptus trees, which he had studied. (After Ludlam's death the area was renamed McNabb's Gardens and later converted into the Bellevue Pleasure Gardens.) Ludlam supported the Wellington Colonial Museum and was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Wellington Botanic Garden in 1869, having introduced into the New Zealand Parliament legislation to "establish and regulate" the garden. He also introduced an act of parliament which entrusted management of the Botanic Garden to the New Zealand Institute (forerunner of the Royal Society of New Zealand). His contribution to the garden's establishment is