Isabel Bannerman

Isabel Bannerman is a garden designer. ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN by Elizabeth von Arnim

Penguin, £6.99, ISBN 978-0241341292

Mary Annette Beauchamp, born in Australia, was brought up in Europe in Bohemian circles. In 1898 she wrote this instantly best-selling novel under her married name although she is now better known for her later books, particularly Enchanted April.

A fictionalised account of living with her children and German husband – ‘the Man of Wrath’ – in Pomerania, this book is a semi-autobiographical account of making a garden, although not in the same way you or I make gardens as it would have been ‘indecent’ to get stuck in as an important lady at the time, although later in life she really gardened. Funny and vibrant von Arnim discovers that the path to joy lies in having a garden, rather than a room, of one’s own to escape husband, family – ‘relations are like drugs, useful sometimes, and even pleasant, if taken in small quantities and seldom, but dreadfully pernicious on the whole, and the truly wise avoid them’ – and servants, mocking her gardening mistakes. Her love for lilacs, Madonna lilies and roses is altogether captivating.

A GENTLE PLEA FOR CHAOS: REFLECTIONS FROM AN ENGLISH GARDEN by Mirabel Osler

Bloomsbury Publishing, £12.99, ISBN 978-1408817896

Writing a small book about making a garden at our new house, I turned again to this text. Memory told me that Osler’s ethos was uncommonly akin to mine. Written at the end of the 1980s, a decade when the haughty lady horticulturists had exported the English ‘supergarden’ in books and reality worldwide, this book was a blast of fresh air. Osler started garden writing at my ripe age, living near Ludlow, and wrote for the journal Hortus, as well as award-winning books. Timeless and evocative, vivid and dreamy, opinionated and dryly amusing, this book has never been out of print. In not-so-gentle language, it is an intimate story of how she and husband Michael let the garden take over their lives. She advocated a controlled disorder, less dominance over things, more intimate understanding and enjoyment. This lesson is more salient than ever.