[3] George Percival Baker's father George Baker in 1848 designed and supervised the creation of the garden at the British Embassy at Constantinople and, after completing the work,[3] in Constantinople went into the trading business, including the export of Turkish carpets.
[6][7] G. P. Baker was an important collector of early Oriental fabrics and a leading expert on calico painting and printing in the East Indies.
[8][9][10] As a mountaineer, G. P. Baker is most famous as one of a party of four who in August 1882 opened a new route on the east ridge of Dent Blanche.
[3] After thirty years of strenuous and distinguished mountaineering and exploration, as described in his mountaineering obituary, George Percival Baker gave up serious climbing in 1911 and thereafter devoted himself to plant hunting in a number of European countries, including the Caucasus, with his life-long friend George Yeld, three visits to Crete, Morocco, the High Atlas, Corsica, Greece, Asia Minor, the Lebanon and Palestine, the Riff Mountains of French Morocco, the Pyrenees and Switzerland, and from each he brought back treasures to beautify his garden as well as to benefit horticulture generally.
[11] In 1933 G. P. Baker was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour of the Royal Horticultural Society.