Farewell, Tony Venison
TONY VENISON, Gardens Editor of COUNTRY LIFE from 1979 to 1994, died last week. Friends and colleagues remember a plantsman who gathered about him a formidable stable of writers, making the magazine the place to turn for intelligent writing about plants.
Mr Venison was a regular visitor to Benton End in Suffolk, where Cedric Morris had opened the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing and, in 1968, he was a founding member of the influential East Anglian Gardening Group. It was thanks to his efforts that East Lambrook Manor, the home of Margery Fish, champion of English cottage gardening, was saved from developers. In 1994, he was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal, the RHS’S highest international honour.
Although his seemed a solitary life, Mr Venison had many friends and loved nothing more than showing visitors around his garden in Sudbury, Suffolk. It was full of plants he had been given and that he would give to others —not least Sternbergias that had been collected in the wilds of Andalusia in Spain by Morris and now thrive at Bryan’s Ground, in Herefordshire.
Mr Venison’s funeral will be held at St Gregory’s Church, Sudbury, on December 14, at 11am. TD