Garden established in 1861 as an experimental cultivation of Cinchona, a commercial crop thriving at the time.
Ledger did a great service to the world, as millions of cinchona trees grown in India and Java sprang originally from the seeds he collected.
For his bitter controversy with J.E. de Vrij and Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn about the relative merits of the various species of Cinchona (C. calisaya versus C. pahudiana) see the successive issues (from 1862) of Natuurkundig tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië.
He also completed works which were initiated by Reinwardt and German botanist Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn (1809–1864), and was the author of noteworthy treatises on cinchona (1855), vanilla (1856) and camphor (1856).
In 1887, Purvis hired Scottish arboriculturalist David McHattie Forbes from his position as Foreman Forester of the estate of Fletcher's Saltoun Hall to import and cultivate cinchona trees above the sugar line in Kukuihaele, Hawaii at the Pacific Sugar Mill.