History's 'Celebrity' Gardeners (2024)

FAQs

Who is the most famous gardener of all time? ›

Capability Brown

Any list of noted historical horticulturalists has to begin with Lancelot 'Capability' Brown. The 18th century designer is credited with masterminding more than 250 landscapes, coming to characterise the English country estate.

Gertrude Jekyll (1843–1932)

Her partnership with the young architect, Edwin Lutyens, lasted nearly 25 years and their collaboration produced over 100 houses and gardens at the pinnacle of Edwardian garden design. Jekyll authored ten books in as many years, alongside thousands of articles.

Other famous gardeners of the 20th century were Frederick Gibberd (1908-1984), Sylvia Crowe (1901-1997) and Russell Page (1906-1985) who wrote an influential book The Education of a Gardener. Other famous gardeners were Harold Peto (1854-1933) and Lawrence Johnston (1871-1958).

Alan Fred Titchmarsh MBE DL VMH HonFSE (born 2 May 1949) is an English gardener and broadcaster.

In January 1896, two Swanley students, Annie Gulvin and Alice Hutchins, become the first women gardeners at Kew. 1897 The RHS inaugurates the Victoria Medal of Honour. Out of 60 recipients, just two are women – the celebrated plantswoman and garden maker Ellen Willmott and Gertrude Jekyll.

Gertrude Jekyll at the end of the century was perhaps the era's best-known female gardener: in partnership with Edwin Lutyens, she produced many of the era's most important landscape designs and wrote numerous successful books and articles on gardening.

A female gardener is called a Gardenerette. Or a Gardengal.

In his autobiography, Babur described his keen interest in planning and laying out formal gardens. He built palaces with gardens. These gardens were placed within rectangular walled enclosures and divided into four quarters by artificial channels.

Celebrity Gardeners

Family duo, Dave and Harry Rich, are better known as the Rich Brothers, the stylish young talents in the horticulture world.

Who was the most famous garden of the 17th century? ›

The grandest example is found in the Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the landscape architect André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV.

Lancelot Brown Lancelot Brown was perhaps the most famous landscape gardener to come out of England, and is credited as being England's greatest gardener.

Gertrude Jekyll

Crucially, she was untrained and while she didn't charge for her designs, she earned money through the sales of plants she specified. Jekyll remains a legend, a name frequently thrown at the argument that women are underrepresented in gardening, because we still look to her work now.

One of history's most fascinating and botanists was Jeanne Baret, who became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in 1769, collecting many unknown-to-Europe plant specimens along the way - all while disguised as a man. Baret was born to a peasant-class family in the historical Burgundy region of France.

In the late 1960s Peter Seabrook began to pursue his freelance career as a horticultural journalist and presenter following his first appearances on television with a weekly slot about vegetable gardening on Pebble Mill at One.