John Nietner

Johannes was born in Paretz, near Potsdam where his father Theodor Eduard Nietner (1790-1871) and mother Charlotte Louise Albertine or Bertha née Sello (1802-1835) belonged to court-gardener families.

Louis moved to Java in 1848 to work as a gardener in the Dutch East India Company and died there in June the next year.

A footnote by Johannes' father to a note by the son states that an opportunity in Ceylon came up after a visit to Dr John Lindley at his garden in Chiswick near London.

Lindley suggested a place in Ceylon where Nietner could work and this may possibly have been an estate belonging to the Berlin banker Ferdinand Moritz Delmar (1781-1858).

& R. Crowe and Co. in Colombo and around 1857 he bought Fernlands Estate[10] at Pundulu Oya "by his industry and thrifty diligence" along with Staniforth Green, an uncle of the entomologist E. E.

[11] When he visited Germany in 1863 he could claim to be an established plantation owner as noted in a newspaper clipping kept by his sister Pauline.

Nietner made several tours in which he explored botany, specifically seeking novel plants of economic value (especially nut bearing trees) suitable for cultivation in Ceylon.

He explored the Himalayas in January 1853 starting from Bengal and travelling through Delhi, Kashmir, followed by visits Nainital and Almora.

The Nietners set out to return to Germany in 1874 but John died en route on February 21 of dysentery and is buried in the General Cemetery (Kanatta), in Colombo.