Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust has for a number of years supported International Women’s Day. In 2022 we featured Forgotten Buckinghamshire Women in Gardening: Margaret Ursula Mee ( 1909-1988), Alice de Rothschild (1847-1922) and Kay Naylor Sanecki (1922-2005). In 2023 it was Women Head Gardeners in Buckinghamshire: Franzi Cheeseman at Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens, Jackie Hunt at...Read More

    21st Century Women Gardeners   Franzi Cheeseman MHort (RHS) CHort Head Gardener of The Stoke Poges Memorial Garden I was lucky enough to grow up in central Switzerland in a small town near Lake Lucerne. From age five I knew that I wanted to be a gardener. We didn’t have a garden as...Read More

Buckinghamshire’s Forgotten Women in Gardening: Margaret Ursula Mee (1909–1988) Margaret Mee, a celebrated botanical artist whose exotic paintings of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest flora are exhibited around the world, started life in a modest but happy family among the farms and fields of early 20th-century Chesham. Born Margaret Ursula Brown on 22nd May 1909 in...Read More

Buckinghamshire’s Forgotten Women in Gardening: Alice de Rothschild Alice Charlotte von Rothschild was born in Frankfurt on 17 February 1847. She spent her early years in Vienna, and after the death of her mother in 1859 spent time with various European relatives including at Aston Clinton and Mentmore. When her brother Ferdinand’s wife Evelina died...Read More

  Buckinghamshire’s Forgotten Women in Gardening: Kay Naylor Saneski   (1922 – 2005) Archivist, writer, editor, garden historian and horticulturalist Kay’s 100th birthday would have been in 2022, and interestingly this year also marks the 50th Anniversary of The Garden History Journal as well as the Bucks Gardens Trust’s 25th Anniversary and of course the Queen’s...Read More

In Stephen Switzer’s Practical Husbandman and Planter (1733), he recommends wide paths between beds for ease of access and as we can see from this quote, weeder woman and boys to pick off and destroy snails and slugs every morning! Who does the weeding in your household and that of your family, neighbours and friends?...Read More

MAUD GRIEVE Self-published by the author claire@decarle.plus.com ISBN 978-1-911133-21-6 To order your copy email the author: claire@decarle.plus.com £12.00 including postage & packing The Whins in Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire is where Maud Grieve and her husband lived from about 1908 and is where she established her Medicinal Plant Nursery and Training School during the First...Read More

2021 marks the 80th Anniversary of the death of Maud Grieve The inspirational herbalist, writer, teacher and gardener ‘Now let me tell you about that wonderful plant’* Maud Grieve was born in London in 1858. She spent her early married life in India, and on their return at the end of the 19th century the...Read More

Margery Fish (1892–1969) Plantswoman and garden writer ‘Margery Fish, virtually single-handedly, was responsible for the renewed popularity of the ‘cottage garden’ style of planting in the second half of the twentieth century’ (Catherine Horwood). Margery Fish (née Townsend) has a very tenuous link with Buckinghamshire: although she probably visited her family in Chalfont St Peter...Read More

Valerie Finnis (1924–2006) Photographer, lecturer and gardener Although Valerie Finnis did not live in Buckinghamshire, the Bucks Garden Trust has much to be indebted to her for. The Finnis Scott Foundation makes grants to horticultural and art history projects and was established in accordance with the will of Lady Montague Douglas Scott (Valerie Finnis) in...Read More