Liberty Hyde Bailey (March 15, 1858 – December 25, 1954) was an American horticulturist and reformer of rural life.

[6] In 1888, he moved to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York,[7] where he assumed the chair of Practical and Experimental Horticulture.

He dominated the field of horticultural literature, writing some sixty-five books, which together sold more than a million copies, including scientific works, efforts to explain botany to laypeople, a collection of poetry; edited more than a hundred books by other authors and published at least 1,300 articles and over 100 papers in pure taxonomy.

[15] Bailey and his family are interred in a grand Egyptian Revival styled mausoleum of his own design at Lake View Cemetery in Ithaca, New York.

He had a vision of suffusing all higher education, including horticulture, with a spirit of public work and integrating "expert knowledge" into a broader context of democratic community action.

In contrast to other progressive thinkers at the time, he endorsed the family, which, he recognized, played a unique role in socialization.

Especially the family farm had a benign influence as a natural cooperative unit where everybody had real duties and responsibilities.

The independence it fostered made farmers "a natural correction against organization men, habitual reformers, and extremists".

The grander design of a new rural social structure needed a philosophical vision that could inspire and motivate.

He was scornful of the actual forms of peasant life and wanted to transform it by cutting the farmers loose from "the slavery of old restraints".

[21] Bailey's simultaneous embrace of the rural civilization and of technological progress had been based on a denial of the possibility of overproduction of farm products.

Finally, after desperately toying with Communism, he had to choose between fewer farmers and farm families and restraint on technology or production.

The inherent contradictions of his ideas have been equally persistent: the tension between real farmers and rural people and the Country Life campaign; difficulties to understand the operative economic forces; the reliance on state schools to safeguard family farms; and hostility to traditional Christian faith.

[23]: 182  After retiring as dean of the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1913, he devoted the better part of three decades to finding, collecting, and writing about palms.

Thus, he could recall spending his 79th in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his 82nd in Oaxaca, Mexico, his 88th in Trinidad, his 90th in Grenada, and his 91st at sea on a small sailboat between Sint Eustatius and Saint Kitts.

[24] Friends and colleagues at Cornell hoped to hold a 90th birthday celebration for Bailey, and they did, but only after their guest of honor returned to Ithaca in May.

The Herbarium houses many of his palm collections, as well as an assortment of photos, a portrait, and several of his personal items including his desk.

With Rose Agnes Greenwell he discovered a Kentucky berry plant that he named Rubus rosagnetis in her honor.