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…
Category: Flowers
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 