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John Tradescant the elder (ca 1570s – 15/16 April, 1638), father of John Tradescant the younger, was an English naturalist, gardener, collector and traveller, probably born in Suffolk, England. He began his career as head gardener to the Earl of Salisbury at Hatfield House, who initiated Tradescant in travelling by sending him to the Low Countries for fruit trees. Later, Tradescant was gardener to the royal favorite George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. John Tradescant travelled to the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery in Arctic Russia in 1618, to the Levant and to Algiers, collecting seeds and bulbs everywhere and assembling a collection of curiosities of natural history and ethnography housed in a large house, "The Ark," in Lambeth, London. The Ark was the prototypical "Cabinet of Curiosity" [1], a collection of rare and strange objects, that became the first museum open to the public in England, the Musaeum Tradescantianum. From their botanical garden in Lambeth, on the south bank of the Thames, he and his son, John, introduced many plants into English gardens that have become part of the modern gardener's repertory. A genus of plants (Tradescantia) is named to honour him. Tradescant Road, off South Lambeth Road in Vauxhall, marks the former boundary of the Tradescant estate.

He was buried in the churchyard of St-Mary-at-Lambeth, as was his son, which is now established as the Museum of Garden History.

He is the subject of the novel by Philippa Gregory, Earthly Joys.

• Prudence Leith-Ross, The John Tradescants: Gardeners to the Rose and Lily Queen, 1984. ISBN 0-7206-0612-8.
• Arthur MacGregor (Editor), Tradescant's Rarities: Essays on the Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum, 1983. ISBN 0-19-813405-3.
• Mea Allan, The Tradescants. Their Plants, Gardens and Museum 1570-1662, London 1964.

• Tradescant Collection at the Ashmolean Museum
• Vauxhall Society
• Botany