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Rosemary Verey: The Life & Lessons of a Legendary Gardener
Rosemary Verey was the last of the great English garden legends. She was a natural teacher, encouraging Americans to believe that they were fully capable of creating beautiful gardens in a native vernacular. She also re-introduced the English to their own gardening traditions. Drawing from garden history and its literature, she developed a language of classical formal design, embellished with her exuberant planting style. This is Rosemary Verey's story and the lessons she taught. In her life as in her work, she was the very personification of the English garden style.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published July 3, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 4, 2012
Rosemary Verey was a British garden designer with a distinct style based on historic gardens of old. Her inventiveness was allowed full rein within the constraints of geometric patterns: the outline of the gardens was defined somewhat strictly and marked with box balls and clipped hedges, but within these boundaries a brilliant collection of perennials, shrubs, bulbs and herbs complemented one another and competed for space and gave the impression of an orderly chaos.
There was a moment in our [American] recent history when new homeowners and gardeners yearned for just such a profusion of structure, color, and character, and lionized anyone who could help them achieve it. Rosemary Verey was just such a one: a woman of strong opinions, she could teach those interested how to create memorable plant pictures suitable to specific conditions. But we learned as all artists soon do that success is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration. The labor-intensiveness of her most successful schemes makes one reassess the time commitment after enjoying the fruits of one’s labors for a few years.
Fortunately most of Verey’s books were available to me when I began my flirtation with gardening. She enriched my imagination and most of all encouraged boldness and a degree of daring (but no orange). Barbara Paul Robinson, the author of this Verey biography, reminds us of Verey’s oft-repeated remonstrance: “It is a sin to be dull.” Dull Verey was not, and she could evoke strong feelings in most people who touched her life or her work.
Verey’s gardens remind me a little of jazz musicians. A great and successful jazz musician (Branford Marsalis?) once said that great art is not completely improvised: it is creating something new within the constraints of an accepted form. I like the idea of constraints, because we all have them, and some do better than others when operating inside of them. And this is so for Verey. The gardens she created will always be lovely, but they won’t have her individual spark of genius without her.
Born in 1918, she lived a traditional middle class life until her children left home, and was in her forties when she began creating gardens around the house at Barnsley in the Cotswolds that her husband had inherited as the only son of a long line of clergymen. She began with garden designs unearthed in her historical researches, and began to riff on that, adding a profusion of sometimes new and complementary plants within the formal outline.
Verey had an outspoken and outgoing personality that was much prized and admired in America, though perhaps less so in Britain. She had opinions on everything, but her real focus was gardening in a particular style. And that is perhaps why her star has waned. What she brought to us was an obsession and said “you can do it, too.” We liked to think so, but alas, we could not. We hadn’t the time, the army of gardeners, the wealth, the vision, the dogged pertinacity.
Robinson the author shows us Verey the woman: whatever her flaws, they are presented within the context of very basic human needs for companionship, closeness, intimacy. This is a fascinating portrait of a woman working within the constraints of her own nature, excelling in some things while doing less well on others. The trajectory of her life gives us material for meditation on our own gardens.
There was a moment in our [American] recent history when new homeowners and gardeners yearned for just such a profusion of structure, color, and character, and lionized anyone who could help them achieve it. Rosemary Verey was just such a one: a woman of strong opinions, she could teach those interested how to create memorable plant pictures suitable to specific conditions. But we learned as all artists soon do that success is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration. The labor-intensiveness of her most successful schemes makes one reassess the time commitment after enjoying the fruits of one’s labors for a few years.
Fortunately most of Verey’s books were available to me when I began my flirtation with gardening. She enriched my imagination and most of all encouraged boldness and a degree of daring (but no orange). Barbara Paul Robinson, the author of this Verey biography, reminds us of Verey’s oft-repeated remonstrance: “It is a sin to be dull.” Dull Verey was not, and she could evoke strong feelings in most people who touched her life or her work.
Verey’s gardens remind me a little of jazz musicians. A great and successful jazz musician (Branford Marsalis?) once said that great art is not completely improvised: it is creating something new within the constraints of an accepted form. I like the idea of constraints, because we all have them, and some do better than others when operating inside of them. And this is so for Verey. The gardens she created will always be lovely, but they won’t have her individual spark of genius without her.
Born in 1918, she lived a traditional middle class life until her children left home, and was in her forties when she began creating gardens around the house at Barnsley in the Cotswolds that her husband had inherited as the only son of a long line of clergymen. She began with garden designs unearthed in her historical researches, and began to riff on that, adding a profusion of sometimes new and complementary plants within the formal outline.
Verey had an outspoken and outgoing personality that was much prized and admired in America, though perhaps less so in Britain. She had opinions on everything, but her real focus was gardening in a particular style. And that is perhaps why her star has waned. What she brought to us was an obsession and said “you can do it, too.” We liked to think so, but alas, we could not. We hadn’t the time, the army of gardeners, the wealth, the vision, the dogged pertinacity.
Robinson the author shows us Verey the woman: whatever her flaws, they are presented within the context of very basic human needs for companionship, closeness, intimacy. This is a fascinating portrait of a woman working within the constraints of her own nature, excelling in some things while doing less well on others. The trajectory of her life gives us material for meditation on our own gardens.
April 13, 2013
I had read her books over time, and I truly enjoyed this biography of her life. Having been a self-taught gardener, and witnessing what happened to my mother's own gardens after her death, I can report that some of the sadder aspects of gardens is that they rarely last. The author of this book admits Verey was very big on high maintenance garden (that's what it took to create her look, at least) of constantly breaking up and rotating plants. She was also big on daily morning maintenance, another one of my mother's cardinal rules. She had staff. Most of us do our own gardening, and sustaining just the cost of dirt and nutrients and gee gaws and stone, the pruning of towering trees...like horses, serious gardening is a rich man's plaything. Saddly, her son lost the property she left him, and the new owners turned it into a hotel-spa, then they lost it, and now it's being regrouped into another hotel, but the author reports that the garden has gone "seedy." Some of Verey's clients were Prince Charles, King Hussein and Elton John. That gives you an idea of what is needed to create these Eden's we all long for. I think if you are a serious gardener, even at the top of your game you have to accept two tenets: One. Tastes change. Your fame and passion for the traditional blowsy English border can give way to ecological concerns, native indigenious plants and contained spaces. Two. Don't except your work to outlive you. You have to accept, more than maybe any other art, that it will soon revert back into nature in a very short span of time---without the control of the human touch.
January 22, 2014
"The definitive book on the great gardener and designer. Meticulously researched and invigorated by the author's own personal recollections, Barbara Paul Robinson has captured the essence of Rosemary Verey's genius for creating gardens and also her great capacity for friendship. Rosemary's influence on twentieth-century garden style remains her legacy to designers all over the world."
—Penelope Hobhouse
"Truly great gardeners deserve a fine garden writer as a biographer. . . . Rosemary Verey, the former doyenne of twentieth-century English garden design, has found the ideal one in Barbara Paul Robinson. . . . Robinson is able to provide in-depth insight into her subject's character and personality as well as her genius for blending highly original landscape composition with great horticultural craft."
—Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
". . . all but channels the great Rosemary Verey herself."
—Berkshire Style
—Penelope Hobhouse
"Truly great gardeners deserve a fine garden writer as a biographer. . . . Rosemary Verey, the former doyenne of twentieth-century English garden design, has found the ideal one in Barbara Paul Robinson. . . . Robinson is able to provide in-depth insight into her subject's character and personality as well as her genius for blending highly original landscape composition with great horticultural craft."
—Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
". . . all but channels the great Rosemary Verey herself."
—Berkshire Style
December 20, 2020
Sad to have a good friend who will write a biography including one’s personality flaws. It does make for a necessarily honest biography, but it might seem less .... traitorous to friendship if someone other than a friend had written it. At least it’s not as cruel as the bios of May Sarton and Beverley Nichols.
April 1, 2021
Rosemary Verey was a famous garden designer, and deservedly so. This book was not at all what I expected. This was a biopsy of her life, her relationships, her flaws...
As a passionate gardener, what I wanted was insight into how her garden designs evolved, I wanted drawings and schematics and lovely photos. I did not find that here.
As a passionate gardener, what I wanted was insight into how her garden designs evolved, I wanted drawings and schematics and lovely photos. I did not find that here.
April 25, 2018
Clearly not an easy personality, despite her accomplishments.
July 1, 2016
I fell in love with her books when I purchased and read the Scented Garden. Rosemary is an extraordinary self-taught gardener who excelled at finding the right people to follow through with her plans and was an extremely hard-working person. She came to gardening as a middle-aged woman. ( I have to confess that I am fascinated by all the women who started their careers later in life) She had a distinct style, very English, full borders of pale plants. Unfortunately her former home is no longer open for visitors as it has been sold by the family. Reading this did give me encouragement to continue working on my garden.
May 25, 2014
Well-written and nothing held back in this biography of Rosemary Verey. Learned so much about this garden designer, who published her first book when she was 62.
April 15, 2017
Interesting read of an interesting life - it did make me want to go on a garden tour of the UK ( and possibly the US as well!)
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews