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

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Looking out at the garden, through the kitchen window, the shrub roses are still, in mid-October, blooming in the beds. The morning sky is fine, and the low sun is shining on the lawn.

Sadly, the performance is coming to an end and Miss Willmott’s Ghost will leave the stage. I’ve yet to work out how to replace her. Any suggestions? Miss Willmott of Warley Place: Her Life and Her Gardens. London: Faber and Faber. 2012. ISBN 9780571280810.

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Willmott received a substantial inheritance from her godmother, another keen gardener, Countess Helen Tasker of Middleton Hall, Brentwood, who died in 1888. [6] [7] This enabled her to buy her first property near Aix-les-Bains, France, in 1890. [1] [2] Horticultural career [ edit ] Ceratostigma willmottianum, one of over 60 species named after Ellen Willmott or Warley Place.

But Ellen Willmott also lived well beyond her means. She gradually squandered her fortune, went bankrupt and was forced to sell her estates. She eventually died penniless. She also became increasing eccentric, even paranoid, booby-trapping her estate to deter thieves and carrying a pistol in her handbag at all times. She also had strange gardening habits, one of which led to the name Miss Willmott’s ghost. Giant sea holly is a tall biennial, easy to grow in cooler temperate climates (USDA zones 4 to 7) and able to survive in poor, well-drained, even dry soils where it maintains itself by self-sowing. It can be a tall plant, usually about 1.2m (4 feet) tall, but sometimes 1.8m (6 feet). In my garden, it’s the latter, rising on stiff stems from well above most of the plants around it. The upper part of the plant is silvery blue green and very spiny. Photo: www.whiteflowerfarm.com Willmott was one of only two women, alongside Gertrude Jekyll, to receive the Victoria Medal of Honour in 1897 (newly instituted that year for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee). [2] In 1904 she became one of the first women to be elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London. She also received the grande médaille Geoffroi St Hilaire from the Société d’acclimatation de France in 1912, and the Dean Hole medal from the Royal National Rose Society in 1914. [1]Stuart Thomas, OBE, Graham (1987). A Garden of Roses. London: Pavilion Books Limited. p.160. ISBN 1-85145-059-9. Liberating” Seeds in Other People’s Gardens Miss Willmott’s ghost, with its appropriately ghostly silver coloration, pops up here and there in some of the world’s best gardens. Photo: www.gardenia.net a b c d e f Brown, Jane (11 September 1999). "The Essay: Miss Willmott's Ghost". The Independent . Retrieved 12 April 2010. a b c d "Forgotten Gardeners - Ellen Wilmott". Woman's Hour. 30 March 2007. BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved 28 May 2022.