George Clifford was born in 1685 into a bankerŁus family, which originated from England. He had a great fascination for the natural world. On his country estate, De Hartecamp, he accumulated an internationally renowned living- and dried plant collection, living- and stuffed animals, and minerals. It is not known when Clifford first turned his collection into a herbarium. A large part of CliffordŁus collections originated from the garden at De Hartekamp. Clifford was also part of a large, international network of people with a professional or amateur fascination in the natural world.
Through the activities of other botanists working in Amsterdam and Leiden, such as Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), Adriaan van Royen (1704-1779) and Johannes Burman (1707-1779) many exotic plants were added to CliffordŁus collection. Moreover dried plants were exchanged as herbarium sheets. Collections from the period up until 1737, when LinnaeusŁus Hortus Cliffortianus, was printed, reflect the enormous development that Dutch plant systematics underwent at this time both in terms of the theoretical understanding, with respect to the development of new systems for taxonomy, as well as practical insights resulting from the addition of further collections from all over the world.