The mother has long thin legs with dark knee joints, her rotund body a symmetry of brown white and black markings. 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. 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. As her gardens were sold or disintegrated around her, and unable to admit her situation, her reputation for meanness grew.

Her passion for horticulture knew no bounds; at one point, she employed 104 gardeners at Warley Place: if even so much as one weed were to be found in any gardener’s sector, he would be sacked on the spot. Willmott failed to turn up to the ceremony, to the disgust of the President, who scathingly addressed the “lady and gentlemen”. Trick-or-treating is an organised affair with parents shepherding offspring around to collect plastic-wrapped sweets in plastic pumpkin buckets from friendly neighbours. I listened to the audiobook and found the narrator a bit off putting, but enjoyed Ellen’s life story, and the puzzle of how it was put together.

Cutting back will not harm your plants but will help in their establishment by promoting new root and shoot growth once planted.

tall (90-120 cm), this short-lived perennial prefers full sun locations and enjoys dry, well-drained soils. 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. 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.Eryngium giganteum 'Miss Willmott's Ghost' is well worth growing for its architectural flower-cones, each encircled by a spikey, ornate bract. Both the species and its cultivar 'Silver Ghost' have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. BY THIS TIME of the year, all but the hardiest annuals have succumbed, and most perennials have gone dormant.

At her peak, Ellen Willmott, supported plant-hunting trips to China and the middle east, and created two notable gardens in France and Italy. 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! I was celebrating – the paperback of Miss Willmott’s Ghosts, published exactly a year after the hardback came out.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. The fresh, variegated green and white foliage proved to be a botanical sheep in wolf’s clothing that was almost impossible to eradicate. She funded plant-hunting expeditions to China and several plant species are named after her ( Ceratostigma willmottianum, Iris willmottiana, Rosa willmottiae, etc. Examine regularly whilst in fridge and immediately remove any seeds which show signs of germination.

In all she grew 100,000 different plant species and cultivars, employing 104 gardeners to care for them. Bleached by the end of summer, the dramatic dried stalks persist until wind and rain turn them to stubble. Avoid planting this plant in moist and fertile soils, where it will tend to sprawl and may require support.

The book doesn't feature any photographic portrait of her supposedly favourite plant – the plants she generally spent most of her time on being narcissus, alpines, and her beloved roses. The lack of cash meant that her car was gone, so she took the cheapest train up to London for RHS meetings, with a long walk home from the station at night (possibly explains the gun in the handbag). Miss Willmott's Ghosts is a sweeping biography of a gardening genius lost from most conscious memory but whose spirit lives in the dozens or more plant species named for her or associated with her. Thimbles of pale white-green flowers cradled in a luminous collar of silver, icicle-like bracts on stiff silver stems appear in spring and remain hauntingly beautiful right through to winter. An absolute classic cottage garden biennial with a brilliant architectural presence and will self-sow.