Valerie Finnis's Garden People - A Snapshot of a Changed World

This wonderful book caught my eye while I was queuing at a charity shop counter last week.

Valerie Finnis was a well-known and well-loved figure in post-war British gardening, a noted alpine-grower and plantswoman but, author Ursula Buchan notes that "alongside the dungarees-and-digging Finnis, there existed a completely different Finnis, actressy, mischievous, a woman who adored gossip and outrageous hats. She joined the exclusive circle of People who kept Pugs (Suzanne!), the last of her pug dogs, a beguiling barrel-shaped creature called Sophie".  

Valerie was also a gifted photographer. With great skill and verve, she took photographs of gardeners, gardens and plants from the mid-1950s onwards, using a Rolleiflex camera given to her by a friend. Together with her husband, Sir David Scott, she travelled around Great Britain and beyond, meeting the great and famous in gardening - Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst, Lady Birley at Charleston Manor, Roald Dahl and his family at Great Missenden - as well as lesser-known gardeners, nurserymen, plant enthusiasts , designers and artists. All are seen at home in their gardens, weeding, inspecting, watering and standing proudly by their plants, wearing the fashions of the day, epitomising many aspects of life and society in the second half of the twentieth century.

David & Valerie on their wedding day in 1970. An hour after they were married, they were out in the garden weeding.

Valerie Finnis's photographs are a wonderful record of the gardening scene of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and show a snapshot of a world sadly changed forever.

Interior designer with Colefax & Fowler, American-born Nancy Lancaster accompanied by her elegant dogs

 Mr and Mrs Gerard Parker, snowdrop enthusiasts and stalwarts of the Alpine Garden Society

Hollywood actress, Patricia Neal, Roald Dahl's second wife, and their daughter Tessa at Great Missenden

Vita Sackville-West (in red, inspecting an urn) at Sissinghurst Castle

Cecily "Parsley" Mure in her garden at Buckingham Palace Mews, London.

Margery Fish of East Lambrook Manor in Somerset, who always gardened in a dress (just like me!)

Jack Drake, in his Inshriach Nursery, near Aviemore in Scotland

Amy Doncaster, wielding a fork, at Valerie's Alpine Nursery in Waterperry some time in the 1960s

Taken in the Dolomites, this is Norah Warre, who had a garden in the south of France at the Villa Roquebrune, near Menton

Author of the Collins Guide to Alpines and Garden Plants, Anna Griffith, in front of her alpine house in her Cambridge garden

Rhoda, Lady Birley, wife of Sir Oswald Birley, the artist and fashionable society painter

Aren't they wonderful images? I want to be Rhoda when I grow up!

If you're a fan of social history, vintage fashion and gorgeous gardens I'm sure that you'll love this book as much as I did. You can find secondhand copies of Garden People, Valerie Finnis & The Golden Age of Gardening by Ursula Buchan HERE and HERE.

Rank amateur, Vix, examines her latest specimen, a blue hydrangea, dressed in a vintage Van Allen cotton maxi (bought from eBay 15 years ago) and an Empire-Made sun hat (found in a charity shop bargain bin last week).

Here's what else I read in April (all now re-donated to the charity shop.)

Linking to Judith's, the Style Crone, Hat Attack #70

See you soon!