This post is for anyone who has read Miss Willmott’s Ghosts up to the end of Chapter Seven and just can’t get enough backstory.

Sow seeds IMMEDIATELY you receive them, at any time of the year, they depend on having several months in cold, damp compost, (NOT DRY IN A FRIDGE) before they will germinate. The pollination seed collection brings together a range of plants and flowers that are not only beautiful, but will also help attract a wide variety of pollinators to your garden and help enhance the ecosystem. It contains ericoid and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, which are found in poor acidic soils where ericaceous plants naturally grow. Thimbles of pale white-green flowers cradled in a luminous collar of silver, icicle-like bracts on stiff silver stems appear in spring and remain hauntingly beautiful right through to winter. When seedlings are large enough to handle, transplant and grow them on in cooler conditions until large enough to move outdoors after all risk of frost has passed.

Taller than most other cultivated garden thistles, the plant bears large silvery-blue cones in summer, each flower head resting atop a spiky ruff of brutally sharp silver bracts that let you know if you venture too close as you’re tending the garden. The plant picked up the name Miss Willmott’s ghost early in the last century, named for Ellen Ann Willmott (1858–1934), the English heiress turned plantswoman.

Blooming in summer and sometimes into fall, they are exceptionally care-free plants if they are given a well-chosen site.When choosing plants for your garden you want some ‘core plants’, ones that will that offer weeks of flower, not just a few fleeting days. Sow Eryngium from February to July on the surface of a good seed compost, lightly cover with a dusting of compost or vermiculite, and gently firm down. Whether this book rehabilitates her reputation and helps us understand her much better is difficult to say. giganteum)" with its large flower-heads: “ greatly appreciated for winter decorations, and although not highly coloured like many of the others, they make pretty bouquets arranged with Grasses, etc. Seeds and garden supplies will normally be delivered within the time period stated against each product as detailed above.

Universally interpreted as the rudest of snubs, nobody has ever stopped to question why Ellen wasn't there, or if she was really as difficult and mean as she has been portrayed ever since. And what a period of history she lived through, from huge wealth and privilege to the collapse of that way of life as a result of world wars and social change.She was also a hybridizer (notably of narcissus) and an influential member of the Royal Horticultural Society, one of the first women allowed a role in that august society. Flower stems may be cut back after flowering but the seedheads are attractive and could be left over winter. Grow Eryngium giganteum in gravel gardens or dotted among swaying grasses for a dramatic textural contrast. The book doesn't feature any photographic portrait of her supposedly favourite plant – the plants she generally spent most of her time on being narcissus, alpines, and her beloved roses.