Gardening writer Diana Ross visits twenty gardens and interviews their owners, including Roy Lancaster, Thomas Pakenham, Lady Salisbury, Beth Chatto and James Lovelock. She learns about their relationship with plants, who and what have inspired them, and how they approach the pleasures and challenges of garden making. Some are famous horticulturalists and designers, others have a more tangential relationship with gardening.
The full list of gardeners is:
Roy Roberts
Tony Hall
Roy Lancaster
Tony Schilling
Christian Lamb
Thomas Pakenham
Hugh Johnson
Geoffrey Dutton
Lady Salisbury Penelope Lively
Beth Chatto
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Donald Waterer
Anthea Gibson
Dan Pearson
Kim Wilkie
Ronald Blythe
Richard Mabey
James Lovelock
Lucinda Lambton
Diana Ross is an amateur gardener who turned her hand to writing relatively recently. She began writing for Hortus in 1995, and in 2000 began her series of interviews with gardeners.
Ross has chosen her subjects well. They have one thing in common: they are all exceptional. Her collection is absorbing reading. Waterstone's Books Quarterly