"Eminent Gardeners" reveals some little known gardeners of the 20th century and a new aspect of the "gardening patroness of us all", Gertrude Jekyll. Jane Brown's twin themes are that "gardeners are the chief inspiration of other gardeners", and that the gardens they make are a true expression of their personalities and the way they live their lives. Jane Brown's research unearths the fascinating stories of Francis Wolsley, the soldier's daughter who had to fight for her belief in gardening as a woman's career; Lawrence Johnston, the creator of Hidcote Manor Garden; Norah Lindsay, the most elusive and most talented of gardeners, who might have picked up Gertrude Jekyll's fallen mantle; Huttleston and Henry Fairhaven, English lords who have made amazing but little known gardens as latter-day tributes to their "robber-baron" grandfather; Anne Jemima Clough and Eleanor Sedgwick, making a garden for Newnham College, Cambridge, that was an essential corollary to the education of women; Christopher Tunnard, the lone hope of modern garden and landscape design in England, with a second life buried in American universities; and finally Gertrude Jekyll at home - a view of life within Munstead Wood and the facts behind her legend. As well as demonstrating how the lives of these eminent gardeners interweave, Jane Brown's book also guides the reader around some of the finest hidden gardens of England. - from Amzon