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

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The common name refers to Ellen Willmott, who is said to have carried seeds at all times, planting them in the gardens of fellow horticulturalists.

Miss Willmott was born into wealth, astounding wealth where as a small child she would be given thousands of pounds in cash with her birthday breakfast, but she had no sense of money. 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. But like the velvet shadows that hid away during the sunny months, ghosts are out there biding their time. This year there are no indications of emerging flower spikes, so I am hopeful they’ll bloom next year. In any event, this plant has been around for a long time – so what of before Miss Willmott’s time, when it was just plain Eryngium giganteum?One of the aspects of Miss Willmott’s Ghost that I’ve most enjoyed has been the contrast with neighbouring plants. Known for his great generosity, his thoroughness and his sense of humor, he reached several generations of amateur and professional gardeners over his 40-year career. Feet-on-the-ground is all very well, and there are plenty of opportunities to be sensible, thorough and precise. BY THIS TIME of the year, all but the hardiest annuals have succumbed, and most perennials have gone dormant.

The plant picked up the name Miss Willmott’s ghost early in the last century, named for Ellen Ann Willmott (1858–1934), the English heiress turned plantswoman.A shorter plant, its flowers are metallic blue and burr-shaped and, like my garden variety, protected by a silver ruff of viciously spiked bracts. Needless to say, garden owners were surprised to find drifts of this the giant sea holly appearing a couple of years after her visits, and this is how the plant earned its popular name of Miss Willmott’s Ghost.

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. The entry, published in 1849, reports that although something of a lost art it was still prepared by some confectioners.

Her many horticultural achievements and phenomenal plant knowledge have been overlooked in favour of scandalous tales of her unbecoming behaviour and financial profligacy. This is mainly because of the way they’ve been represented (or not) in maps, photographs and even The Kip, despite their being – in theory at least – right in the middle of the pleasure garden.

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