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

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With its luminous spiny collar of silvery-white bracts surrounding an egg-shaped flower head and tightly packed with flowers, initially pale green, then changing to steel-blue, Miss Willmott’s Ghost (Eryngium giganteum) is quite a catch and an asset to any garden! 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. Apparently, its generally thought that in Falstaff's line in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor , where he runs off for an assignation with Mistress Ford ". This is Eryngium giganteum, also known as Miss Willmott’s Ghost, which is named after Ellen Willmott, an early guerrilla gardener who left a trail of seeds in the gardens she visited. I knew already that Miss Willmott’s Ghost was a biennial and wouldn’t flower before its second growing season.

Thus, it becomes almost a perennial … but a perennial that pops up here and there, never exactly where you expected it.Special Exhibition Label: 'Eccentricity: Unexpected Objects and Irregular Behaviour' (10/5/2011 - 16/10/2011) (MHS Narratives: IRN 15071)". Rarely does he seem to go into print without some form of raving about Warley’s 65-metre ravine, its rocks, its pools, its nooks, its plants – and its creator. 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. The photo is of the most famous plant that is associated with Ellen Willmott - a sea holly, Eryngium gigantium, known as Miss Willmott's ghost as she scattered its seed around gardens when she visited.

A tale of squandered inheritance, forbidden love, drive and ambition, prodigious creativity and trailblazing talent. To give you an idea of the scale of her inherited wealth and horticultural ambitions, she employed 104 gardeners at Warley Place. This highly distinctive genus offers shapes and shades unlike anything else, and valued for that reason.I recently had the immense pleasure of talking with Professor Michael Fay, Head of the Conservation Genetics team at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and orchideer extraordinaire. It is claimed that Miss Willmott grew over 100, 000 different varieties of plants at her estates, the principal one being Warley Place in Essex. She befriended plant breeders, funded planthunting trips and was more successful than anyone in nurturing the seeds and cuttings brought back. According to legend, the famous English plantswoman, Miss Ellen Willmott, secretly sprinkled these seeds in the gardens she visited.

To learn more about the obsessive and brilliant Ellen Willmott I highly recommend Sandra Lawrence’s wonderful book, ‘ Miss Willmott’s Ghost: the extraordinary life and gardens of a forgotten genius’. One article in The Garden of November 1887 on " Sea Hollies " (along with an accompanying illustration as can be seen below), describes the " Giant Sea Holly (E. Miss Willmott was a plantswoman extraordinaire who at one time employed 104 gardeners at her own home. Willmott failed to turn up to the ceremony, to the disgust of the President, who scathingly addressed the “lady and gentlemen”. As her gardens were sold or disintegrated around her, and unable to admit her situation, her reputation for meanness grew.

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. Inside the cat’s cradle of spiderweb is a darker shape, a fleecy rolled-up swaddle blanket studded with shiny petrol-blue fragments of bluebottle, the husk of a wasp.

Frost will pick out the shapes of the sea hollies, the wind will tatter them and in spring when I’m gardening I will find the lacy and beautiful skeletons of their bracts. Ghostly thimbles of pale white-green flowers cradled in a luminous collar of silver, icicle-like bracts appear on stiff silver stems in spring and remain right through until winter. One of the things that home gardeners can do to help is to cultivate native plants that provide nectar and food for pollinators, such as those you will find in the pollination collection. I now have a much better idea of the real Ellen Willmott, and as a passionate gardener myself, I could feel so much of her passion and pain too, I can even relate to some of her struggles. Apparently, the candied sweet was much sought after for coughs and colds - and as an aphrodisiac (what wasn't?Mike and his colleague Mark Chase were kind enough to look at some of Ellen Willmott’s photos of orchids and help identify what they were.