Geoff Hamilton voted favourite garden writer by a blade

30 March 2005 :: Posted by Catriona Finlayson

The late Geoff Hamilton, the longest serving presenter of Gardener's World, is Britain's favourite garden writer according to a recent web vote organised by the British Library in association with the Royal Horticultural Society to complement the Writer in the Garden exhibition.

Online visitors were asked to chose their favourite garden writer from a list of the 35 horticultural and literary authors suggested by experts at the Library and the RHS featured in the exhibition. Voters could also nominate their own favourite writer if they did not appear in the list.

Nearly 500 entries were submitted and Geoff Hamilton scored 16% of the votes. Alan Titchmarsh was a very close second with 14% . With 9% of the votes, Vita Sackville -West, beat other literary giants, Chaucer, Tennyson and Pope to take third place. In equal fourth place were Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of The Secret Garden and Monty Don with 8%. There was another tie between the disciplines with William Wordsworth and Gertrude Jekyll taking 4% each. The rest of the featured writers gained between 1 and 2% each.

Ten lucky voters won a copy of the  the RHS Bicentenary edition of The Encyclopaedia of Gardening published by Dorling Kindersley.

Jane Bishop, Public Marketing Manager commented: "The Writer in the Garden explores how writers of all periods - whether poets, novelists, essayists or diarists - have been inspired by gardens, real or imaginary. With three television gardeners in the top ten it could be that television is just as inspiring as the landscape."

For further information please contact Catriona Finlayson at the British Library Press Office, Telephone 020 7412 7115, e-mail catriona.finlayson@bl.uk.

Notes for editors

The exhibition at the British Library runs until 10 April 2005 , open every day. Admission is free.  Exhibition hours are: Monday, Wednesday-Friday 09.30-18.00, Tuesday 09.30-20.00, Saturday 09.30-17.00, Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays 11.00-17.00. All galleries are accessible by wheelchair. Information can be requested from Visitor Services staff on  020 7412 7332.  For further information about the British Library and its exhibitions please see www.bl.uk

The writers featured in the exhibition were:

Bacon
Bates
Bowles
Buchan
Burnett
Chaucer
Cowper
Don
Donne
Earle
Evelyn
Hamilton
Hellyer
James
Jekyll
Johns
Lacy
Maeterlinck
Marvell
Pearson
Pope
Proulx
Proust
Regnier
Robinson
Rothke
Strong
Swinburne
Tennyson
Titchmarsh
West
White
Woolf
Wordsworth