The last time I visited the extraordinary rock garden at Chatsworth House, back in -ouch – 2014, my overwhelming impression was ‘yellow’. It was majestic, of course – the sheer amount of – well – rock – is a jaw-dropper, but I couldn’t have named a plant or noted a specific area that came to…
Category: Warley Place
A Butterfly Flaps its Wings: Ellen Willmott and the Japanese Ambassador…
I’ve always been intrigued by a fleeting mention in Ellen Willmott’s previous biography: an invitation to lay out a garden for the Emperor of Japan. She turned it down, we’re told, because she had ‘too much to do in Europe’. Author Audrey le Lièvre admits there is no date and no evidence for the story…
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…
Foxgloves at Warley Place
Most people will tell you to see Warley in March. It’s true that Ellen Willmott directed most of her efforts at creating a daffodil explosion of yellows, creams, whites and oranges for March, and they still glow in the early spring sunshine. A few will suggest going earlier, in February, when the place is a…
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
…at Warley Place, anyway. Most people love Warley for its drifts of daffodils. After all, Daffs mean Prizes – Miss Willmott won RHS medals a-go-go for hers. She even boobytrapped the best ones and carried a revolver in her handbag against bulb thieves. There must still be a few prize specimens in there, it’s a…
A Year at Warley Part V: Things that just fetch up…
Garden archaeology doesn’t come much more exciting than finding something pretty much every time you dig. I’ve been visiting Warley Place for thirty-odd years and every time I go something new has been uncovered by the dedicated team of volunteers. Sometimes it’s a bit of brick wall, sometimes a cobbled path. It might be yet…
A Year at Warley Place, Part IV: Daffodils
Miss Willmott had a thing for daffs. No, really, she was crazy about them. On joining the male-dominated Royal Horticultural Society she promptly invaded the all-male Narcissus Committee and won gold medals in four consecutive years. Warley Place would have been sunshine-yellow with prize hybrids, named for her sister and brother in law, and a much-missed sister…
A Year at Warley Place, Pt III: The Ruins
Part three in my year’s exploration of the extraordinary ruined garden at Warley Place, Brentwood, Essex, looks at what’s left of the house and spectacular gardens. Last time saw a potted history of how Edwardian Plantswoman Ellen Willmott’s cossetted baby became so very ruined and overgrown. This time we’ll take a quick hike around what a…
A Year at Warley Place Pt. II: The Story
Warley Place, one of the most exciting gardens of early 20th Century England, has been a ruin since World War II. Ellen Willmott, doyenne of the Edwardian gardening scene, was right up there with Gertrude Jekyll (literally, she and Jekyll were the only two women to receive the RHS’s inaugural Victoria Medal in 1897) but for…
A Year at Warley Place, Part I: Snowdrops
I have often written about my love for Warley Place, the once-famous garden of Edwardian plantswoman Ellen Willmott. The Essex garden, visited by royalty and bigwigs of the gardening world, was lost before the second world war, but was rescued in the nick of time and is now maintained by volunteers as a stunningly gorgeous wildlife…
The Event Gardener 