As Willmott admirers went, there were few more ardent than her mentor, Swiss alpinist Henry Correvon. Rarely does he seem to go into print without some form of raving about Warley’s 65-metre ravine, its rocks, its pools, its nooks, its plants – and its creator. Privately, however, he was rather more stern with his young…
Category: Flowers
Miss Willmott’s Orchids
A couple of days ago I visited the annual Orchid Festival at Kew. It’s a sight to behold, this year celebrating the flora (and fauna) of Cameroon, with orchids used en masse, almost like bedding to create rivers and waterfalls of blooms in a dazzling riot of colour. I highly recommend it, it is just…
Munstead Wood and Warley Place
Late in 1932, Ellen Willmott got a gut feeling that she needed to visit her old friend Gertrude Jekyll. She was just in time; a few weeks later, Jekyll passed away. We found the order of service to her funeral a couple of weeks ago, which Willmott attended in December with an extremely elderly William…
Potentilla Nepalensis ‘Miss Willmott’
Nick Stanley, holder of the Ellen Willmott National Plant Collection, has a theory about the plants named for her. Nick suggests that anything named ‘Ellen Willmott’ was named by a close friend; anything called ‘Miss Willmott’ was more formal; an honour from someone who admired her but was, perhaps, a little more ‘awed’. Of course it’s…
Miss Willmott's Ghosts 