A classic English spinster, severe in appearance, beyond frumpy, and fiercely dedicated to art and beauty, Gertrude Jekyll was born in 1843 and died in 1932. She left us an undying legacy of gardening. She taught us how to look and how to see.

Miss Jekyll could be a very intimidating presence for the careless or slovenly gardener. The great Graham Stuart Thomas recalled going to tea with her when he was about 17 and just starting his gardening career. Class was still very important in England at the time. Miss Jekyll was definitely upper class and young Thomas was only lower middle or upper working class. His employer recommended him to Miss Jekyll as a very likely lad.

It is very apt to consider lilies at this Easter season. Lilium candidum, the Madonna lily, has been known in the Western world for many centuries but it was depicted in ancient times by the Romans and even earlier. When it first arrived in England a wily old monk, the Venerable Bede, abbot of Jarrow in Northumberland, decided to Christianize it. Since he could not rid the populace of their devotion to this pagan flower, he pulled some theological sleight of hand and presto, it was now respectable, a symbol of the Madonna. It has never looked back. Bede is the man who wrote the first history of England.

Editor's note: the following book review discusses the latest work by Judith M. Taylor, who kindly provides her reviews for the MassHort website. The review below was written by Chuck Robinson.

Often garden writing seems like a banquet of desserts. The gardening confections consist of many superlatives linked together rapturously, inundating the reader in hyperbole. After gorging myself, I feel overfull but under-sated, wishing I had ingested something of more substance.

The something more substantive I found this winter has been a new book from Missouri Botanical Garden Press, Judith M. Taylor’s “The Global Migrations of Ornamental Plants: How the World Got into Your Garden.” It has been fascinating.

A very special subset of Americans is represented in this impressive, richly illustrated volume. The author is concerned primarily with American artists who went to live in Europe. In general these were the people who wanted to create gardens and had the imagination and flair to do it. In several cases they were helped by finding local spouses who already owned property or who inherited it during the course of their marriage.