Marion Cran http://carlisleflowers.net/women-garden-writers-in-early-20th-century-winterthur-museum-and-garden-delaware/
I often start these posts with a comments such as ‘here’s someone else you won’t have heard of”, although there’s often a good reason for the subject’s lack of fame … but today’s subject is someone who really has been unjustly neglected.
Marion Cran was the first woman gardening broadcaster as well as a highly successful and popular garden writer. You can judge how well she was renowned at the time by her inclusion, along with the still ‘famous’ Beverley Nicholls, in a comic rhyme by Reginald Arkell in 1934.
Beverley Nicholls and Marion Cran
Hadn’t been born when the world began
That is the reason I must confess
Why the Garden of Eden was not a success
Marion travelled widely writing about gardens abroad as well as Britain in 15 gardening books, and also produced a couple of novels, and assorted other books.
She created two interesting gardens, one of which is still basically intact and being restored in keeping with her ‘spirit’. Yet her success there wasn’t matched by a similar success elsewhere. She often had financial problems and her private life was something of a mess with 3 husbands and a child out of wedlock – hardly a proper state of affairs for a respectable vicar’s daughter in the early 20thc.
Coggers at Benenden, photo by Louise and Colin, 2014, https://www.flickr.com/photos/c-l-english/17164777389
The British galleries in the Victoria & Albert Museum hold many treasures but probably none more interesting to lovers and historians of gardens than two large early 18thc wall hangings from Stoke Edith in Herefordshire. They show elaborate formal garden scenes in the Anglo-Dutch style of late 17th century.
It is tempting to think that the hangings depict the actual gardens that London designed for Paul Foley, who was Speaker of the House of Commons, and if one believes family tradition that they were made by the women of Foley’s family that would be more than a possibility. Unfortunately this view, which used to be shared by Historic England, has been disputed more recently by experts at the V&A who believe that the sheer scale of the hangings, and the consistently high quality of the workmanship suggest that this was unlikely to have been an amateur affair. They argue instead that the hangings were bought from a professional workshop and probably represent a pastiche of contemporary fashionable garden features rather than Stoke Edith itself. There is certainly evidence of the purchase of other hangings for the house [Country Life, 9 Aug 1956].
The Garden History Blog 
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