Obituary
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Beth Chatto (Little, 1935-1940) an appreciation by Joan Gurney (Appleton, 1938-1951)
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Beth Chatto, who died on 13th May 2018 at the age of 94, will long be remembered world-wide as a forward-thinking gardener, horticulturalist and plantswoman of distinction but she was also a renowned writer, teacher, lecturer, exhibitor, award winner and wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother.
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She achieved all these roles by hard work and combined them with ease, charm, determination and elegance.
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Beth (left) was born Bessie Diana Little, at Good Easter, Essex, on 27th June, 1923. Her parents were keen gardeners and she spent her early childhood in Great Chesterford, before moving with her family to Elmstead Market, at the beginning of her teenage years. Her father was a policeman in the village and Elmstead Market was a pivotal point in her life. From here she went to Colchester County High School for Girls from 1935-1940 and followed this by training to be a teacher, at Hockerill College, Braintree. She also met her future husband, Andrew Chatto, in the early 1940s. Andrew was a fruit farmer and therefore exempt from conscription but served in the local Home Guard, which met regularly at Beth’s father’s police house. She taught for a time during the war and grew vegetables in the school garden, to help with the war effort.
In 1943, Beth Little and Andrew Chatto were married and lived for some years with Andrew’s mother in Braiswick, Colchester, and Andrew travelled to his fruit farm in Elmstead Market most days. Here their two daughters were born. In the early 1950s a neighbour, Pamela Underwood, who ran a nursery, involved Beth in flower-arranging and the two of them became founder members of the Colchester Flower Club. Heavily influenced by Japanese plants and flower- arranging, the Japanese Asymmetrical Triangle became for them an integral part of both garden design and flower arranging - foliage being as important, if not more important, than blooms in shaping a border or an arrangement.
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I crossed paths with Beth Chatto several times both at CCHS, where our years of attendance overlapped, and when I came to live in the adjoining village to
Elmstead Market where she opened her Unusual Plants Nursery in 1960. But we did not meet formally, until 2014, when Alan Skinner and I were completing the Grey Friars book and Beth talked to me about her time at CCHS.
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She spoke of the Grey Friars building and gardens with great fondness - the magnificent flower borders, the ancient Holmoak, the Black Mulberry whose leaves supplied the food for the silkworms which the pupils kept in boxes, and the magic of the entrance hall with its sweeping staircase. This tempted her to take a risk and slide down the banisters despite knowing that the headmistress, Miss Ruth King, was a fearsome disciplinarian, and she might be caught in the act!
Beth’s most revealing memory, however, was of the individual small patches of garden which every pupil in the Junior Department tended. These small gardens adjoined the wall which separated the playground from Roman Road. She revealed that it may not have been apparent at the time, but she thought that the seeds of her future career germinated in these little gardens, and although she was an enthusiastic, self-taught gardener, she never realised that she would become a professional one. When she moved on to the Senior Department of CCHS at North Hill, she did not find that it had the atmosphere of Grey Friars, but was grateful for her Latin lessons which gave her a grounding in plant nomenclature. Although she modestly admitted that she was not a creative writer or artist at school, she said that her plants were her art, not always for their colour, but for their shape, form, texture and behaviour. “I arrange my plants as an artist arranges his picture to make a natural look,” she said.
Beth never forgot the influences on her life - the wayside flowers of her country childhood, her school and college, the people she met and the places she visited. She always paid great tribute to her husband, Andrew, whose hobby was researching plants and their habitats in many parts of the world, and for his knowledge of Latin which he passed on to her.
While she was still living in Braiswick, she met Cedric Morris who ran the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Benton End, Hadleigh, Suffolk. He was a renowned artist and plant breeder and over their friendship he gave her cuttings and seeds, some of which still hear his name today. He persuaded her that she needed a new garden in order to express herself because the one at Braiswick, which was well-established but conventional, was not easy to transform into a good garden. In the late 1950s therefore, Beth encouraged Andrew to build a house on his fruit farm at Elmstead Market and they moved there in 1960.
Beth described the site as a ‘muddy ditch’ with inhospitable conditions and choked with brambles and bracken. By 1967 however Beth had opened her Unusual Plants Nursery with a mail order section and part of the fruit farm had been sold off as Andrew approached retirement. Several acres were retained, although Beth admitted that she had never really intended to have a commercial business, but only to develop a garden for her own interest and satisfaction.
The nursery became very successful in the 1970s and in 1976 Beth exhibited at Chelsea for the first time and in the following year won a gold medal. She went on to take 10 gold medals in 11 years. After the success of the first exhibition which was highly praised in the press, she was asked in 1978 to write her first book, “The Dry Garden”. It was followed in 1982 by “The Damp Garden”. Visitors to her garden and nursery increased and orders exceeded all expectations.
In the 1980s also she collaborated with the well-known and distinguished gardener and writer Christopher Lloyd of Great Dixter, and they went on a working lecture tour which took in many countries. In 1988 “Dear Friend and Gardener” was published. This was a collection of their letters to each other with engaging and entertaining accounts of their love of plants and detailed observations of many things from the night sky to bird life and personal adventures.
By the early 1990s Beth’s gardens and nursery were attracting between 20,000 and 30,000 visitors a year. Her philosophy was always “Right Plant! Right Place!” and although she did not coin this phrase, she always added that there are no problem areas in a garden as long as you suit plants to places and work in harmony with nature. She was never afraid to experiment and take risks. This often led to her crating beauty out of adversity. The ‘muddy ditch’ of the early garden she transformed into an enchanting lake and wet area. When more nursery space was needed and a larger car park became essential because of the increased number of visitors, the original sun-baked parking space was abandoned and converted into a dry garden. This was planted with drought tolerant species which today is still never irrigated. Beth’s book The Gravel Garden” was published in 2000.
Finally the Great Hurricane of 1987 tore through the small woodland bringing down trees and ripping off branches. Beth viewed this as a challenge and, once the tangle was cleared, the woodland floor was replanted with shade lovers beneath the stark tree trunks and lighter canopy. Spring bulbs and summer ferns flourished and coloured berries and stems saw in autumn and winter. Her book “The Woodland Garden” in 2002 was born from this experience.
Honours of the highest order were bestowed on Beth Chatto. In 1988 she was awarded the RHS Victoria medal of Honour and the Garden Writers’ Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. This year also saw the death of her husband, Andrew, after 56 years of co-operative gardening and support. She was appointed OBE in 2002 and in 2008-9 she was honoured with a Retrospective at the Garden Museum in London. In 2014 she received the John Brookes Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Garden Designers. She also held an Honorary Doctorate form the University of Essex, just down the road from her celebrated Gardens.
What endeared Beth Chatto to her visitors, customers and readers was that she was a hands-on working gardener, not afraid of participating in the more mundane tasks of gardening - weeding, clearing, digging, spreading and generally getting her hands dirty. She was accessible, approachable and always offered encouragement. An early rise, she was regularly in her garden casually mingling with visitors who were never afraid to talk to her, ask advice, or just greet her in passing. Her books and articles were full of useful practical advice and vivid visual analogies which brought plants to life for many people.
Beth never lost her zest for life, even when her mobility was failing. She was in her garden on the morning of her death, and that is where she would have wanted to be. Beth lived life to the full. She brought the term ‘ecology’ to the forefront of gardening language. Her stock phrase was “If I can do it, you can.” This will be her lasting legacy, and memories of her will never fade.
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