A Year in the Life of Beth Chatto's Gardens

by Text by Beth Chatto and Fergus GarrettPhotographs by Rachel Warne

• ISBN13: 9780711232143
• ISBN10: 0711232148
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-04-03
• Publisher: Frances Lincoln

Summary

Beth Chatto has been among the most influential British gardeners of the second half of the twentieth century. When she started to make her garden on an overgrown area of wasteland in Essex in 1960 she was faced with a range of widely differing conditions, from drought-stricken gravel through woodland to dense, silty bog. Applying the principles of ecological gardening, she set about finding plants that would suit these very different, awkward situations. The gardens she made - the Mediterranean garden on the sunny slopes, the shady woodland garden, the damp garden for water-loving plants, the drier than dry gravel garden - have become legendary. In this book photographer Rachel Warne has traced all these different gardens through the course of a year. She is the author of many books including her classics The Dry Garden (1978) and The Damp Garden (revised 2004) as well as Beth Chatto's Gravel Garden (2000) and Beth Chatto's Woodland Garden (2002). An engaging exchange of letters with Christopher Lloyd, Dear Friend and Gardener, was published in 1998. In 2002 she was awarded the OBE for her services to horticulture. A keen advocate of organic gardening, she has lectured worldwide. To visit the Beth Chatto Gardens website click here

Author Biography

Rachel Warne won the International Garden Photographer of the Year Award 2010. Her work has appeared in magazines including Gardens Illustrated, Country Living, House and Garden, Home and Garden, Garden Life and The English Garden. This is her first book. Beth Chatto is a plantswomen, gardener and writer. She has won ten Gold Medals at the Chelsea Flower Show and was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Victoria Medal of Honour (1987), the Lawrence Memorial Medal and an honorary doctorate from Essex University. She is the author of many books and an engaging exchange of letters with Christopher Lloyd, Dear Friend and Gardener, was published in 1998. Fergus Garrett, Head Gardener at Great Dixter, first worked at the Beth Chatto Gardens as a student, over twenty years ago, and has remained a close friend of Beth's ever since.