Penny's tribute to Christopher Lloyd

Farewell Christo

A sad piece in the newspaper today: Christopher Lloyd has died. Sandy spotted it first and was surprised by my reaction – “You didn’t know him”. But I did. He had been my closest gardening companion for over 30 years.

When I first had a garden I scoured the local bookshop for help. By chance I lighted on ‘The Well Tempered Garden’. It became my bedtime reading for several months. Christo (as I later learnt he was called) was knowledgeable, articulate, but above all very funny. He made you feel you were there with him, chatting away, sharing anecdotes and (sometimes
outrageous) opinions.

Since then I have looked out for everything he wrote. I must have most of his books. Visits to the dentist were greatly improved by reading his articles in ‘Country Life’ Truly the source of most of the information I sought, he was, by turns, stimulating, infuriating and totally inspiring. Over the years he became a sort of friend.

I only managed to visit Great Dixter once. I saw Christo weeding, head down (in every sense of the phrase) and bum up, in a flower bed by the house. With British reserve, I said nothing. Do I regret it? Perhaps. I would like to have told him how much pleasure he had brought me. But a garden needs to be looked after, and I know how I would feel if my weeding was constantly interrupted.

I was delighted to see that plans were afoot to keep the garden going. He certainly found a fellow mind in his Head Gardener, Fergus Garrett. A trust has been set up to save Great Dixter for the future. It will change, of course. He would have hated it to be a museum.

The obituary said that Christopher had learnt gardening discipline from the Japanese. If he had been Japanese he would have been a National Treasure.

My mother once told me that when her Father died she regretted that all his knowledge and experience had gone. But Christo shared his with us, and we are richer for it.