The Pantheon at Stowe, late 1960s from Rena Gardiner by Julian Francis & Martin Andrews
In a recent post about Cotehele in Cornwall I included a couple of images of lino prints by Rena Gardiner, a Dorset-based artist and printmaker. I was so taken with them that I decided to find out more about her. Googling came up with very little apart from the fact that there was a recent biography and that she’d produced a lot of guidebooks for the National Trust in the 1970s and 1980s. So it was off to the British Library to look at them.
The biography is a beautiful produced book by Julian Francis and Martin Andrews, packed with images of her work but still containing very little in the way of biographical information. It appears Rena Gardiner was a quite private woman for whom work was the centre of her life.
In the words of one critic: “Combining the great tradition of British topographic artists with the rich era of autolithography of the 1940s and 1950s, she created her own very personal and individual visual style. An unsung heroine of printmaking, uninterested in publicity or fame, she created an artistic legacy that is instantly recognisable for its exuberant use of colour and texture.” Continue reading
When I was growing up, and it was the same for my parents’ and even grandparents’ generations, one of the great names in the gardening world was that of Arthur Hellyer, whose books were on every amateur gardeners shelves and whose life spanned almost the entire 20thc. He was a practical hands-on gardener, a highly respected gardening journalist and author and a professional to his fingertips. 
The Garden History Blog 
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