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

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Please note: if Government advice or our staffing situation suddenly prevents us from dispatching, then rest assured that your plants will be reserved and cared for until such a time as we can dispatch again. Three survived into the second season, and I was rewarded with Miss Willmott’s Ghost shimmering away in our garden throughout last summer. Her fortune depleted and all the gardeners let go, Willmott died alone at Warley Place surrounded by an overgrown and unkempt landscape.

She also became increasing eccentric, even paranoid, booby-trapping her estate to deter thieves and carrying a pistol in her handbag at all times. Thus, it becomes almost a perennial … but a perennial that pops up here and there, never exactly where you expected it. Easy to grow, low care, pest and trouble-free, Miss Willmott’s Ghost lights up the garden throughout summer. IT was engagingly written and bought the whole story of victorian and edwardian horticulture to life for me.But she didn't stop others shaping her future and she travelled extensively putting together an astonishing plant collection, most of which is now lost amidst the ruins of Warley Place, now run as a successful nature reserve, and somewhere I definitely need to visit soon! The most obvious reason why we remember Ellen Willmott as a horticulturist is because, however fragmented, there is at least some evidence of her horticulture. However, according to the plant’s entry in Maund’s Botanic Garden of 1849, the name Eryngium was adopted by the ancient Greeks, and the written description was sufficiently definite for Linnaeus to identify the plant and thus he kept the name. It spends it's time everywhere and as a result spends less time in her gardens than I would have liked. But her ghost remains in the elegant form of sea holly, unofficially known as ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghost’.

It is for her gardening however that she was best known - she made three gardens, the main one at Warley Place near Brentwood in Essex, one near Aix-les-Bains in France and one - hardly visited - Ventimiglia in Italy. Seen at dusk at a distance, the silvery-white blooms covering most of the plant give this variety a ghostly luminosity.

This is a book with it all: gossip, sisters, rivalry, squandered inheritance, forbidden love, bad marriages and, at the heart of it all, trailblazing talent. She could be rude and downright cruel to loyal staff and friends – “complex, brilliant and confrontational,” Lawrence concludes. Ellen Ann Willmott was a remarkable woman whose achievements in horticulture, botany, landscape architecture, photography and more, should have made her one of the most well-known trailblazers of her age. Just sow it outdoors in early spring or, better yet, late fall (it needs a bit of a natural cold treatment to sprout well) in a sunny spot and let it do its thing. In her lifetime, however, Ellen was known equally – and in some circles more – for her musical abilities.

Avoid planting this plant in moist and fertile soils, where it will tend to sprawl and may require support.

Its beautiful texture and unique color, coupled with its long-lasting flowering make it a favorite of gardeners! To give you an idea of the scale of her inherited wealth and horticultural ambitions, she employed 104 gardeners at Warley Place.