Miss Willmott's Ghosts

The beguiling story of one of Britain's most remarkable horticulturalists

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'An amazing read! I galloped through it' Lady Antonia Fraser

'Lawrence has done an excellent job of recreating this eccentric gardening guru's life' The Times

'My pick for gardening book of the year is this page-turning life story of Ellen Willmott' The Sunday Times

'Sandra Lawrence tells her story with brio and affection' Daily Mail

'Simply brilliant and a joy to read' The English Garden

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. Yet, both posthumously and within her lifetime, she instead became known as a bitter, cantankerous and eccentric miser, and her reputation has been forever stained by the image of her maliciously seeding other people's gardens with thorns.

The beginnings of this prickly myth can be traced back to her conspicuous absence at what should have been the pinnacle of her career: the Royal Horticultural Society's inaugural Victoria Medal of Honour Award ceremony, at which she was due to be one of only two female recipients. Universally interpreted as the rudest of snubs, nobody has ever stopped to question why Ellen wasn't there, or if she was really as difficult and mean as she has been portrayed ever since.

Author, Sandra Lawrence, has been granted unparalleled access to her archives, and with it has uncovered the secrets behind this thorniness. 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.