Celebrity gardeners are what publishers are banking on this year. The Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury, known in New York as ‘the high priestess of historic garden design’, has given us her gardening autobiography. A Gardener’s Life (Frances Lincoln, £35) is illustrated by another aristocrat, Derry Moore — in private life Lord Drogheda. The book looks as beautiful as the gardens that the Marchioness makes. Her famous style of scholarly nostalgia can be seen in Ireland, France, Italy and America, as well as at Highgrove and in many English gardens, including her own newest venture, on a Chelsea roof. Cranborne remains for me the dream garden and Hatfield, perhaps her greatest achievement, appears all ‘luxe, calme et volupté’. This kind of display is far from normal, but it does offer a peephole into the kind of places where privilege reigns. Lady Salisbury may appear all wistful beauty, but she is also a woman of courage and dogged intellectual persistence. Her first sight of Highgrove was from the back of a horse, after leaping the post and rails surrounding the paddock. Her research into Renaissance gardens has been thorough enough for her to read the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and although she describes herself as a total amateur, her drawings clearly produce results and her knowledge of plants and organic methods is impressive.
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