Watching Gardeners’ World on TV, my attention was hooked when garden historian Advolly Richmond described “gardening’s bad girl”. An award-winning Edwardian gardener, it’s claimed Ellen Willmott booby-trapped her rarest plants, sabotaged her rivals’ gardens and carried a knuckle duster. This was certainly a change from Monty Don explaining how to overwinter dahlias! Articles describe a celebrated horticulturalist but focus on Ellen’s “fall from grace” after she failed to attend a Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) awards ceremony in 1897. One of only two women, she was
