{"id":2633,"date":"2019-01-28T05:41:45","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T13:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2633"},"modified":"2019-01-28T05:41:45","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T13:41:45","slug":"lady-beatrix-stanley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/lady-beatrix-stanley\/","title":{"rendered":"Lady Beatrix Stanley"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a student of gardening history, especially in the winter, when actual gardening activities are necessarily limited.\u00a0 Sometimes in my reading, catalog perusal and other armchair activities, certain tantalizing figures pop up repeatedly.\u00a0 This happened recently with Lady Beatrix Stanley, whom I found waltzing across the pages of a snowdrop catalog, dancing through listings for a pottery company and mentioned repeatedly by vendors of dwarf irises.<\/p>\n

Lady Beatrix\u20141877-1944–was an aristocrat, the daughter of a marquis and the wife of an earl\u2019s younger son who was later knighted for his service to the government.\u00a0 She was also a great plantswoman, well known in the English horticultural circles of her time.<\/p>\n

As is often the case with women in garden history, Lady Beatrix is something of a shadow.\u00a0 Finding her birth and death dates takes some doing, and the only pictures I could find were of her namesake iris and snowdrop.\u00a0 There is no Wikipedia listing for her, so I had to glean basic information from biographical sources about her husband, Lord George Stanley.\u00a0 Details about Lady Beatrix were spread over a plethora of plant websites and catalogs.<\/p>\n

Beatrix Taylour married George Frederick Stanley in 1903, when she was the ripe old age of 26, and embarked on a career largely devoted to supporting her husband, who was, at various times, a Member of Parliament and a British colonial civil servant.\u00a0 The Stanleys were prominent social figures and Beatrix and her infant daughter starred on the cover of Country Life <\/em>magazine in July 1907.\u00a0 But perhaps the biggest adventure of their married life occurred later, from 1929-1934, when Stanley served, first as Governor of Madras, now Chennai, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and for one year as Acting Viceroy of India.<\/p>\n

During the Stanleys\u2019 time in India, Beatrix made gardens around the Governor\u2019s residence in what was then called Ootacamund.\u00a0\u00a0 She studied the native plants of various Indian regions, including Kashmir, and documented her experiences in writing and plant portraits, forwarding some of her drawings to the Royal Horticultural Society in London. . Her written output included an article, \u201cGardening in India\u201d, published in the May 23, 1931 edition of the British publication, The Gardener\u2019s Chronicle.<\/em><\/p>\n

When not gardening, writing or painting, she also fostered community relations by founding the Nilgiri Ladies\u2019 Club to facilitate interaction between Indian and English women.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lady Stanley\u2019s gardening horizons changed when her husband\u2019s colonial service ended and the couple returned to England.\u00a0 Her social status and horticultural expertise led to her being named editor of an RHS publication, The New Flora and Fauna, <\/em>from 1938-1940.<\/p>\n

Beatrix Stanley\u2019s specialty was bulbous plants, especially snowdrops, which she grew at her home, Sibbertoft Manor.\u00a0 She made many friends among England\u2019s galanthophiles.\u00a0 Among them was the renowned Edwardian gardener, E.A. Bowles, whose book My Garden in Fall and Winter<\/em>, is still a classic.\u00a0 She and her friends propagated, cultivated and swapped plants, some of which are still on the market today, hence Beatrix\u2019s appearance in my 2019 snowdrop catalog.\u00a0 A lovely double snowdrop was named after her.\u00a0 Another named plant, Iris histrioides \u2018Lady Beatrix Stanley\u2019, is a spring-flowering dwarf species with bright blue petals.\u00a0 This year, Moorcroft Pottery, a prestigious English manufacturer and vendor, introduced a vase and a jar inspired by Beatrix and depicting that same iris.\u00a0 I would buy one if it weren\u2019t so pricey.\u00a0 As it is, I will have to content myself with a cache of the little plants in the front of one of my garden beds.<\/p>\n

Beatrix Stanley also lives on in the snowdrops at Hodsock Priory, the historic house owned by her grandson, Andrew Buchanan.\u00a0 Every year, the Hodsock gardens open in spring to show off the amazing drifts of the little white flowers.<\/p>\n

For a brief moment in time Beatrix dances on a white carpet and emerges into the public consciousness once again.\"Lady<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a student of gardening history, especially in the winter, when actual gardening activities are necessarily limited.\u00a0 Sometimes in my reading, catalog perusal and other armchair activities, certain tantalizing figures pop up repeatedly.\u00a0 This happened recently with Lady Beatrix Stanley, whom I found waltzing across the pages of a snowdrop catalog, dancing through listings … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[1159,2039,371,238,2038,370,272],"class_list":["post-2633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-dwarf-iris","tag-galanthophiles","tag-galanthus","tag-garden-history","tag-lady-beatrix-stanley","tag-snowdrops","tag-spring-flowering-bulbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2635,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2633\/revisions\/2635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}