Miss Willmott's Ghosts: the extraordinary life and gardens of a forgotten genius

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It is claimed that Miss Willmott grew over 100, 000 different varieties of plants at her estates, the principal one being Warley Place in Essex. By encouraging these animals to your garden, with pollinator friendly seeds, you can help more natural growth occur within local landscapes. IT was engagingly written and bought the whole story of victorian and edwardian horticulture to life for me. The photo is of the most famous plant that is associated with Ellen Willmott - a sea holly, Eryngium gigantium, known as Miss Willmott's ghost as she scattered its seed around gardens when she visited.

Most things written about this plant in print and on the web repeat the story that Miss Willmott indulged in this early form of ‘guerrilla gardening’ - and some also say that Eryngium giganteum was her favourite plant.

Divided into 3 groups these lists, linked below, are maintained by a team of RHS staff and are reviewed annually. Unfortunately, with the current Brexit situation, we are unable to deliver to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

These days, I stick to collecting seeds of benevolent annuals and biennials — continuity and obsolescence are built into their nature. SPOILER ALERT Okay, if you haven’t read Miss Willmott’s Ghosts yet, avert your eyes – this post is Not For You.In 2019 she was given access to hundreds of newly discovered letters, notebooks, lists and receipts found in a damp basement by descendants of Ellen’s sister. The plant picked up the name Miss Willmott’s ghost early in the last century, named for Ellen Ann Willmott (1858–1934), the English heiress turned plantswoman. She missed the drama by mere hours, taking the overnighter down from Paris to join her sister and brother in law – who were in the building, fast asleep.

Rising atop a basal rosette of heart-shaped green leaves, this short-lived perennial or biennial self-sows generously and remains in the garden year after year for our utmost pleasure. I'm not always sure why a particular bon mot is important but more often than not, interesting enough to pursue in its own reading. Apparently, its generally thought that in Falstaff's line in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor , where he runs off for an assignation with Mistress Ford ". The name could equally apply to the plant's appearance, with its ruff of large, prickly, steely-grey bracts that shine a ghostly silver in the sun.But she didn't stop others shaping her future and she travelled extensively putting together an astonishing plant collection, most of which is now lost amidst the ruins of Warley Place, now run as a successful nature reserve, and somewhere I definitely need to visit soon! Widely branching heads of metallic silvery-green cones of flower are surrounded by spiny silver bracts. One of the things that home gardeners can do to help is to cultivate native plants that provide nectar and food for pollinators, such as those you will find in the pollination collection. Miss Willmott and Gertrude Jekyll were the only two women amongst 58 men to be awarded the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH) in 1897, the year of its institution to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Miss Willmott was a plantswoman extraordinaire who at one time employed 104 gardeners at her own home.