Maud Grieve was born in London in 1858. She spent her early married life in India, on their return at the end of the 19th century the couple built a house, The Whin’s in Chalfont St Peter where Maud established a beautiful garden. At the outbreak of World War One she transformed her garden into a herb farm to meet the urgent need for medicinal plants by the pharmaceutical industry. She was also involved in setting up the ‘Herb Growing Association’. She supplied plants and seeds and pamphlets on their cultivation and established a training school for women and ex-servicemen from the colonies. In 1918 she let out her drying shed to the war artists Paul and John Nash where they accomplished some of their finest war commissions. Maud is probably best remembered for her book The Modern Herbal, which was published in 1931, is still relevant today.
Claire de Carle is the chair and a trustee of Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust which is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2022. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Trust’s Research & Recording project in 2013 which has produced reports on around 100 locally important historic gardens. She enjoys researching and writing about little known historic landscape gardens and more recently she has set up two other projects: Artists and their Gardens and Public Parks in Buckinghamshire. She lectures to local groups about Buckinghamshire gardens and Maud Grieve, the herbalist who was the subject of her MA dissertation. Claire lives in Oakley a small village on the Bucks/Oxon border, in her spare time she works on her garden that she and her husband have created over the last seven years.
This Gardens Trust lecture takes place May 17 at 5 am Eastern, but a recorded link will be sent to watch over the following week. Register HERE
