Re: Rosemary Verey, legendary gardner, dies at 82

Thanks Elle
I didn't even know she had died feel very sad that I never got to meet her
- accidently missed my chance a couple of years ago..what a wonderful llife
she has led though and touched so many people
she certainly touched my life
Hazel

----------
> From: elle <elle@aracnet.com>
> To: perennials <perennials@mallorn.com>
> Subject: Rosemary Verey, legendary gardner, dies at 82
> Date: Sunday, 10 June 2001 6:14
> 
> 
> This Hade been cut and pasted from the New York Times 
> Rosemary Verey, Legendary English Gardener Who Tutored America, Dies at
82
> By ANNE RAVER
> 
>  Rosemary Verey, the tough, artistic English gardener who brought the
> art of
> clipped boxwoods, laburnum walks and ornamental vegetable gardening to
> America, died in Chelsea Memorial Hospital in London on May 31. She was
82.
> 
> "She was a marvelous lecturer and she knew so much," said Gregory Long,
the
> president of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. He first heard
her
> speak about her famous garden at Barnsley House, a 17th-century rectory
in
> the Cotswolds of England, about 20 years ago at the Horticultural
Alliance
> of the Hamptons.
> 
> The four-acre garden was her working laboratory, where she domesticated
> elements from legendary gardens, like the yellow-flowering laburnum arch
at
> the National Trust's Bodnant Garden, in North Wales, or the ornamental
> potager, or vegetable garden, at the Chateau de Villandry, in the Loire
> Valley in France, and made them seem possible for the home gardener.
> 
> Mr. Long remembers staring longingly at the slides of the neo-Classical
> temple that Mrs. Verey's husband, David Verey, an architectural
historian,
> had dismantled in an English park and rebuilt himself, stone by stone.
> 
> "It was a really good lesson in garden-building," Mr. Long said. "None of
> this redwood pergola stuff from catalogues."
> 
> Years later, when he became the president of the New York Botanical
Garden,
> he would ask her to design an ornamental vegetable garden for the Bronx,
> complete with cold frames for extending the seasons and herbs that are
used
> by gardeners from other cultures. She was working on the design with the
> sculptor Simon Verity the week that she died of pneumonia, possibly
> contracted while flying to Cincinnati and on to Kentucky to work on
gardens
> there.
> 
> She was mentor to many American garden leaders like Marco Polo Stufano,
who
> transformed Wave Hill, the public garden in the Riverdale section of the
> Bronx; Robert Dash, the painter who created the Madoo Conservancy, on the
> East End of Long Island, and Mr. Long.
> 
> Ms. Verey wrote more than a dozen garden books including "The Classic
> Garden" and "The Garden in Winter," which were seminal works for
Americans
> interested in design and sophisticated use of plants, with color and
texture
> year-round.
> 
> In her later years, she designed gardens for British celebrities like
Prince
> Charles and Elton John. But her favorite people were gardeners. She often
> gave them cuttings and seeds from plants she herself had clipped or
gathered
> from such legendary gardens as Gethsemane, outside the city of
> Jerusalem, or
> Monet's garden at Giverny.
> 
> For more than 20 years she redesigned the grounds around Barnsley House,
> which is near Cirencester, in Gloucestershire, first with her laburnum
arch,
> which dangles chains of gold flowers over purple alliums in May. Her
husband
> laid the path beneath, a mosaic of colorful stone and pebbles collected
from
> the Pembrokeshire beaches.
> 
> "She had an impeccable eye for color, an ability to embroider gold
against
> purple," said Mr. Dash, whose gardens at Madoo, in Sagaponack, N.Y., are
> widely considered an American work of art. "She took that grim forbidding
> aristocratic face off English gardening, and with her charm and her
> writings, gave it a friendly, domesticated face."
> 
> Mr. Dash and Ms. Verey would occasionally lecture together, playfully
> arguing over whose garden was more original and just who stole from whom.
> Did Ms. Verey really swipe her famous laburnum arch from Bodnant?
> 
> "Of course!" Mr. Dash said, laughing. "But my laburnum arch bears no
> resemblance to hers. It's a question of following your own light."
> 
> She studied mathematics and economics at University College in London,
but
> left before earning her degree to marry Mr. Verey in 1939, and proceeded
to
> raise four children, like a proper English gentlewoman of her day. She
was
> an accomplished horsewoman, until she fell in a hunting accident.
> 
> "A horse rolled over on her," Mr. Dash said. "So her husband gave her a
book
> on mandrakes that piqued her interest." And a temple just to get her
> started.
> 
> A scholar and perfectionist, she began to read widely, collecting rare
first
> editions usually seen only in the British Museum or the Royal
Horticultural
> Society's Lindley Library. Her redesign project began in 1950, and the
> grounds opened to the public in 1970. By the time her husband died in
1984,
> she had started a new career, and a garden that would eventually attract
> 30,000 visitors a year.
> 
> She lectured widely in the United States, where she made five or six
> trips a
> year to cities like New York, Seattle, Atlanta or Chicago, or to Indiana
and
> Kentucky. "Flower shows in winter and the garden clubs in spring and
> summer," Mr. Long said. "We began to see a lot of laburnum arches in the
> Hamptons."
> 
> She took many young gardeners under her wing, drilling them in the Latin
> names of plants, and shooing them off for the day to plunge into the
great
> gardens of England.
> 
> "She would get very cross with us if we didn't speak to the head
gardener,"
> recalled Mr. Stufano, who with his companion, John Nally, spent many
> days in
> the gardens at Barnsley. "Her garden was a very personal garden. She was
> always trying new things. It had the feeling of someone who loved plants
and
> she was out in it constantly. She was a wonderful cook and one of my fond
> memories is being sent out to the garden for a few marrows, or zucchinis,
> for dinner."
> 
> Long before Mr. Long became president of the New York Botanical Garden,
he
> made a gardener's pilgrimage to Barnsley, to learn some secrets for his
> place upstate. He had been happily wandering about in the rain, poking
about
> as gardeners do, when he saw her looking out the window.
> 
> "She was so imposing in those days, I was a bit intimidated by her," he
> said. "I almost wished that she not come out. She showed me Phlomis
> fruticosa, which is a silver- leafed thing with yellow flowers in the
fall.
> I tried to grow it at home and couldn't."
> 
> Then she locked the gate and invited him in for drinks. Years later, at
his
> own garden upstate, she sat on his compost pile and showed him how to dry
> the bulbs he had carelessly thrown away. They bloomed the next year.
> 
> Her influence was not restricted to naïve Americans. David Wheeler, the
> editor of Hortus, a garden quarterly in England, who has built, with the
> artist Simon Dorell, a garden on the edge of Wales, was also nurtured by
Ms.
> Verey, who opened up her library, garden and larder to him.
> 
> She was a great networker, or Miss Fix-It, as Mr. Wheeler put it. When he
> admitted that he would like to meet Prince Charles, she simply rang him
up.
> "Be here at 5," she said." "We're expected at Highgrove at 6."
> 
> Her vegetable garden, a tapestry of ever-changing cabbages, lettuces,
> strawberries, hop vines and espaliered fruit trees, "has become a cliché
> copied around the world," Mr. Wheeler said. "But she made us look at
growing
> vegetables in these times of peace and well-being. We were no longer
digging
> for victory and growing rows of vegetables. We could do this
decoratively."
> 
> She also reinvented the formal garden, he said, with little parterres of
> clipped boxwood. "Those had been part of the English garden since
> Elizabethan times," he said, "but it had all but washed away with
modernism
> and the 20th century."
> 
> In 1999, Ms. Verey received a special award from the Massachusetts
> Horticultural Society for her work with English gardens, and the same
year,
> was given the Royal Horticultural Society's most distinguished award, the
> Victoria Medal of Honor.
> 
> She leaves two sons and two daughters. Over the last two years, her son
> Charles has overseen the gardens, which are still open to the public.
"But
> the eye is gone," Mr. Dash said. "The artist is gone."
> 
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