Mary Spiller
Pioneering presenter of Gardeners’ World who tended vibrant herbaceous borders at Waterperry
MARY SPILLER, who has died aged 95, was one of Britain’s foremost postwar women horticulturalists, helping to create the stunning ornamental garden at Waterperry near Oxford and in the 1980s becoming the first female presenter of the popular BBC television series Gardeners’ World.
Now covering eight acres, the gardens at Waterperry date from 1932, when the formidable Miss Beatrix Havergal founded her School of Horticulture for Women. Mary Spiller enrolled at the age of 18 and quickly impressed, going on to become one of Miss Havergal’s celebrated “Waterperry Girls”, along with Pamela Schwerdt and Sibylle Kreutzberger, Vita Sackille-west’s last head gardeners at Sissinghurst, and Valerie Finnis, a pioneer of garden photography.
After working as a selfemployed gardener in Yorkshire, Cornwall and Wales, Mary Spiller returned to Waterperry in 1963 and taught there until the school closed in 1971 when Miss Havergal retired. Appointed horticultural manager, Mary Spiller worked with Bernard Saunders and Jean Manger to develop the estate and preserve Miss Havergal’s vision.
The gardens surround Waterperry House, a medieval manor with Queen Anne additions. The centrepiece is the spectacular herbaceous border – widely considered the finest in the country – which remains a monument to Beatrix Havergal’s ingenious planting and aesthetics. Between May and October the border displays changes of colour and form, from an early display of lupins and geraniums to a high summer show of delphiniums and verbascums, before a third flush from Michaelmas daisies, goldenrod and heleniums.
To complement this central feature, Mary Spiller and her team created a rose and formal knot garden, a water-lily canal and the river walk which in spring is lined with narcissus, snowdrops, aconites and primroses. Part of the walled garden houses a commercial plant centre, and there are five acres of commercial orchards, producing the famous
Waterperry apple juice each year. In 1980 a film crew from the Gardeners’ World visited Waterperry to interview Mary Spiller, and as a result she was asked to join Geoff Hamilton, Clay Jones and Geoffrey Smith as a presenter. She became a fixture on the show for three years.
As a gardener and teacher, she demonstrated a wide-ranging knowledge and understanding of plants, and was a natural communicator to generations of students. She loved colour, resisting the modern trend for a muted plant palette and favouring fiery splashes where she felt they would provide interest or an eye-catching focal point.
The younger of two daughters of Reginald Spiller, an academic crystallographer at Oxford University, Mary Rose Spiller was born on April 13 1924 and brought up in Cowley in a house built by her grandfather, who was once landlord of the Old Tom pub in St Aldate’s. She attended a convent school in Temple Cowley and Milham Ford school in Headington, where she became interested in gardening and wildlife.
During the Second
World War she wanted to work in the Women’s
Land Army rather than become a nurse or a teacher. However, her father disapproved, and in 1942 he enrolled her at Waterperry School of Horticulture for Women in Wheatley near Oxford.
With the outbreak of war, Waterperry had been turned into a market garden and Mary Spiller spent a year ploughing and joining Dig For Victory demonstrations, producing much-needed food. In 1943 she was taken on as a student when Miss Havergal resumed teaching and in 1945 Mary was chosen to work on the Waterperry estate as well as to study.
Invariably clad in a collar and tie, smock and garters, Miss Havergal ran the school on rigorous lines, but despite her mentor’s no-nonsense approach, Mary got along well with her.
From 1963 until her retirement at the age of 90 in 2014, Mary Spiller worked as a lecturer at Waterperry, teaching amateur gardeners attending courses there and sharing her knowledge and understanding, not only of horticulture but also of wildlife.
After Miss Havergal’s retirement, she was also appointed the estate’s horticultural manager, a post she held until 1990. She continued to consult and teach in her own retirement, and to help raise funds through the Friends of Waterperry.
Mary Spiller was the author of two books, Growing Fruit (1982) and Weeds: Search And Destroy (1985), a guide to identifying, controlling and eliminating persistent weeds.
Always positive and forward thinking, she recently ordered from Waterperry the Kiftsgate Rose, the most vigorous and vicious variety which, although it appears as a waterfall of simple white flowers, has been known to smother large, mature trees. She did so with a mischievous note in her voice, confident that she would not have to deal with it in 10 years’ time.
One of her passions was alpines, but Mary Spiller was an all-round horticulturist and in 2008 was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s associateship of honour.
Although she was unmarried (“the right person never came along”), Mary Spiller envisaged having 11 children – “enough to make a cricket team”.
Her older sister, Betty, 101 last Wednesday, survives her.
Mary Spiller, born April 13 1924, died October 27 2019