Plaque tribute for UK garden pioneer Fanny

The presenter of BBC’S Gardeners’ World is to unveil a blue plaque in honour of Britain’s first professional female landscape gardener.

Rachel de Thame, 60, said Fanny Wilkinson “blazed a trail” for women gardeners at the “highest level”.

Wilkinson volunteered at the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association charity. which aimed to create green “lungs” in London in the late 19th-century. Within two years, she persuaded the charity to pay her and she went on to create more than 75 public gardens. De Thame said: “Fanny was a pioneer who blazed a trail for those women who work as head gardeners, designers and landscapers.”