Gardeners’ gardener

Christopher Lloyd died on 27 January. Not since the deaths of Gertrude Jekyll in 1932, William Robinson in 1935 and Vita Sackville-West in 1962 has so much homage been paid in the broadsheets to the memory of a gardener. In the nation at large, more people mourned the deaths of Percy Thrower and Geoff Hamilton, but these were television personalities. Christopher’s reputation rested on a weekly column, ‘In My Garden’, in Country Life from 1963 until shortly before his death, his contributions to the Observer and the Guardian, a succession of thoughtful, opinionated books, such as The Well-Tempered Garden, and, most particularly, on his garden and nursery at Great Dixter in East Sussex, a draw for garden enthusiasts for almost 50 years.

He was lucky with his situation. His parents, Nathaniel and Daisy Lloyd, bought the 15th-century manor house in 1910. Edwin Lutyens, a friend, remodelled it and added a hall house of the same age, which had been taken to bits and brought the four miles from Benenden.