The inner workings of Gertrude Jekyll

Gertrude Jekyll in Sussex Edited by Sally Ingram (Sussex Gardens Trusts, £15)

GERTRUDE JEKYLL is one of those enduring arbiters of taste whose influence extends far beyond her own lifetime. It is natural that modern garden historians should wish to mine her considerable paper archive, especially now that we live in a digital age and need not devote our lives to pilgrimages to distant locations. This is just as well, since the great bulk of Jekyll’s papers, having turned up in various British locations after her death in 1932, now reside in good order in a university in California. Researchers can view these documents on a screen, hence the bulk of those discussed in this admirable book.

‘Jekyll had an alarming habit of cramming her drawings with planting details’

This is a well-edited collection of essays by