What do you know about Queen Charlotte?

I’d bet for many people whatever they know comes from having seen her on Bridgerton, so they’re likely to know she was the wife of George III  a marriage which lasted for over 57 years. They might also know  that she had 15 children with him, and that there is some unfounded controversy about her ethnicity.

But I wonder how many might know that  she was an enthusiastic botanist and very keen gardener ….& that she was not responsible for the fake -and anachronistic – wisteria seen in the series on the front of the Bridgerton residence .

Wisteria on Rangers  House, Blackheath, the TV location of the Bridgeton residence. Wisteria was not introduced to Britain until 1816 , just a year or so before Charlotte died.
For more on wisteria see this earlier post

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Your author at Stowe in Oct last yr. Photo by Twigs Way

2025 has been a very mixed year for the blog. As most of you will know, I changed the name at the very beginning of the year to help the Gardens Trust with the lengthy process of auditing of its digital content.

Unfortunately despite being repeatedly assured by the tech people that this wouldn’t really interfere with search engines finding previous posts, it has. As a result readership has fallen drastically. The total number of views for the year is  only 160,000 compared with 236,00 for last year – a daily average of 450 compared with 650. It’s taken numbers back to the level of 2022 but everything else is good  and I’ve got my fingers crossed that there will be a slow recovery during the coming year.

A sneak preview of one of next year’s posts. Any idea what it’s going to be about?

As always, thank you  for your loyal support and the nice comments. Please keep  telling your friends about the blog and get them to join the mailing list.  Just  go to the very bottom of any post, enter an email address and each new post  will appear, as if by magic, early on Saturday morning in time for breakfast.

And now for the quiz….

A  garden on the list for next year’s blog

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MERRY CHRISTMAS!

A Christmas Cabbage

“The approach of Christmas time is already heralded by profuse displays, in every variety of design and colouring, of those cheerful cards which it has become so fashionable now-a-days to exchange between families and friends at the close of the year.” So began an article in the press   on 4th December 1880.

It went on…” of the entire host of card makers we must give the palm, alike for originality of invention, exquisite taste in design, and admirable finish in execution, to Mr Herman Rothe, 11 King Street, Covent Garden, London.”

I suspect it would be difficult to find anything showing more  “originality of invention”  than a set of bizarre humanised vegetables offering Christmas Greetings…although whether they show “exquisite taste in design” might be debatable!

A dandy of a beetroot and a well-dressed potato offering seasonal greetings – cards by Herman Rothe

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Wolley Dod’s Rose

Gardeners who are famous to one generation often don’t stay in the public memory of the next.  So while we still treasure Ellen Willmott, Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson, one of their highly regarded contemporaries  has vanished from the face of horticulture history, although in his day, he was as esteemed as any of them. That’s probably because  he wrote no books.

If you’ve heard of Charles Wolley Dod then you’re either a fanatical reader of Victorian gardening magazines, or maybe a fanatical plant specialist who remembers a cultivar named after him or his garden or perhaps a member of Cheshire Gardens Trust… but if you have no idea who I’m talking about then why not read on and find out more about him…

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