User:Timothy r. clark/sandbox

OBSERVATIONS ON PLANT HERITAGE
There would have been little effort  to save  plants of the previous centuries if  Juliana Ewing –a relative by marriage- to Gertrude Jekyll  had  not written Mary’s Meadow in  1888. Although written for children, it caused  interest not only in old gardening books like Parkinson’Paradisus; part of the story  but   many nannies  sent their children  to cottage gardens to see what plants could have survived  the landscape movement .This had  neglected  the flowers  from our first gardens. Mary’s Meadow was written around a hose in hose cowslip, mentioned in Parkinson 1623  where  one  flower  came  out of another  as  gentlemen’s stockings   did in the time of William Shakespeare. The Parkinson Society  was  then  created   to save old plants,  it  survived until the First World War.

Eleanour Sinclair Rohde a lady of private means   was  the  librarian  of  the  library  of    gardening books collected by Leonard  Messel  at Nymans ,sadly lost to fire. Peter Coats  recorded  that  between  the  wars  many  small historical treasures were being grown there. Eleanour Sinclair Rohde  was a great  scholar, in my opinion her books have never been equalled. She  recorded  seeing with pleasure  hose in hose and jack in the green primroses   at the R.H.S. Show in  1928. In 1982  Lt.Col Rohde her great uncle encouraged me to record her work. After its publication in Country Life I received a letter from Anne ,Countess of Rosse  Leonard Messel’s daughter thanking me for making sure her memory was retained. Living in Surrey and a published author it is inconceivable that she did not know Gladys Peto the famous artist and dress designer. When  I wrote the story of Gladys Peto’s gardening for the Lindley  Library  Brent Elliot said he could not believe this was the same artist he knew   edging  the Bloomsbury Set. They both used the same publisher for their plant list. In 1939 Sacheverell Sitwell published his book Old Fashioned Flowers helping the survival of  many  plants through the war. I had observed that Mrs.Earle’s Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden contained many ideas which were expanded by Gertrude Jekyll Mary Lutyens advised me to record her gardening for the Garden History Society.She was very pleased with the result. She told me one day I would cease to write articles for Country Life and The Garden.I would need to write books .Consequently when I wrote the article in Country Life which saved Margery Fish ‘s garden and David & Charles asked me to write a book on her gardening I was delighted. This book was reprinted in 2000 A.D.allowing me to use illustrations of the plants that she had saved from my garden. This book  has  given pleasure   to  many gardeners. When our friend Mary Mc Murtrie died and her daughter found 150 paintings she then asked me to write a book on Cottage  Garden Flowers. I told her it would be more interesting to  record  why  these  ladies  thought  the plants were worth saving  at a time when every fifth day a house of some architectural interest was being demolished. Mary McMurtrie’s Country Garden Flowers has  been  equally  successful  particularly  in  North  America.

My garden  has   been  influenced  by the destruction of the English Country House. My wife saw the end of the estate of Lower Brockhampton in Worcestershire. She said we had to accept we were going down in the world;  but   we would at least go down fighting. We    consequently  kept about 4,000 cultivars of Old English plants .When Plant Heritage was created I quickly gave away most of the easily grown  cultivars. For twenty or so years I  have  opened  the garden so anyone who wishes to see  yesterday’s plants  can donate to the National Gardens Scheme for a nominal sum.