Ellen Willmott – ‘Miss Cerato’

by Gwenda Kyd BFRP

If, like me, you like to explore the plants used to make the Bach remedies, then you might have heard of Ellen Willmott, because the remedy Cerato is made from Ceratostigma willmottianum. The genus name suggests the plant has a ‘horn-shaped stigma’ and the species name shows a connection to someone called Willmott.

Up until recently, I didn’t know much about this person Willmott – actually Miss Ellen Willmott – beyond that she had the reputation as a cantankerous lady and she partially funded the plant-hunting expedition to China on which Ernest ‘Chinese’ Wilson found the plant. However, a recent book by Sandra Lawrence, Miss Willmott’s Ghosts, has thrown new light on the facts and fictions surrounding Ellen Willmott.

A much-repeated story about Ellen is that giant sea holly (Eryngium giganteum) is known as Miss Willmott’s ghost because she carried some of its seeds in her handbag when she visited other gardens and dropped them as she went to disrupt the plantings. Like many stories about Ellen Willmott, this is probably not true and didn’t appear until long after her death. It turns out Ellen was a highly-skilled gardener, one of the first women admitted into the Linnean Society and recipient of the Victoria Medal of Honour. Not only that, but we have a lot more to be grateful to her for than just supporting Wilson’s travels.

Ellen was born in 1858 and she and her younger sister Rose shared a passion for gardening. The family home, from 1875, was Warley Place in Essex and the sisters developed the garden there. Ellen lived at Warley Place until her death in 1934, when the estate was sold to clear her debts. The house was demolished and what remains of the garden is now looked after by Essex Wildlife Trust.

Ellen’s passion for gardening led her to spend extravagantly – she had an income of £1000 a year from her godmother Helen Tasker, up until she died in 1888 when Ellen and Rose both received a large sum of money. As well as Warley Place, the sisters bought a property near Aix-les-Bains in France and Ellen later bought Villa Boccanegra in Ventimiglia, Italy.

She was a talented photographer and published a book of photos of the gardens at Warley Place. She also wrote a book, The Genus Rosa, published in two volumes in 1910 and 1914, and was known for her love of Alpine plants and daffodils – reputedly, her daffodil beds at Warley Place were booby-trapped to deter thieves. During later life, she struggled financially and refused to take the advice of friends to sell items and property or at least to stop spending so much. She had great belief in her judgement quite unlike someone who might need to take the BFR Cerato (for people who don’t have faith in their decisions)!

Ernest Wilson had already been on two successful plant-hunting expeditions to China when Charles Sargent of the Arnold Arboretum offered funding for another one, this time to Western China. However, Wilson wasn’t keen – as well as the hardships of the expeditions, he now had a wife and child.

Ellen was scathing in her comments about Ernest’s wife Nellie – seeing her as a barrier to his plant-hunting. She was perhaps understandably frustrated by Nellie’s opposition to Ernest’s travels, but other comments led to her being labelled a women-hater. She supposedly didn’t have a high opinion of women gardeners, saying women would be ‘utterly hopeless and unsafe in the borders’.

However, this may have been said in jest – in reality she did support women gardeners as a member of the Women’s Farm and Garden Union which promoted educational and employment opportunities for women working on the land and helped to establish a Women’s Land Army during the 1914–18 war. Ellen also employed female apprentices. And she had a mutual respect for other female gardeners of the period including Gertrude Jekyll. Although there was perhaps some competitiveness between them at times, Jekyll wrote in 1908 that Ellen was ‘the greatest of all living woman gardeners’. And in 1900, Ellen wrote of Jekyll, ‘I admire her greatly and I have a high opinion of her capabilities’. More of Jekyll later.

Ellen was tasked by Sargent with persuading Wilson to continue his plant-hunting and eventually succeeded – she also donated the sum of £200 to the expedition. He left in December 1907 and in 1908 discovered what we now know as Ceratostigma willmottianum. Seeds were sent to Ellen who gave some to her sister Rose, who by now was married and living at Spetchley Park in Worcestershire.

The two sisters were the only people who managed to get the seeds from Wilson to grow – meaning every plant growing in Europe today is a descendent of the Willmotts’ plants. There were other plants in the genus Ceratostigma already known in the UK – including C. plumbaginoides, grown since the mid-1840s – and it wasn’t until 1914 that our Cerato plant was recognised as a separate species (due in part to the plants reaching a height of 5 feet – much taller than C. plumbaginoides). As well as our Cerato, Ellen Willmott left as part of her legacy over 50 other plant species named after her or her Warley Place home.

But what more do we know about the circumstances of Dr Bach finding the Cerato plant bearing her name in 1930? Nora Weeks wrote that he found it growing in the garden of a large house near Cromer. It has been suggested that this village is Overstrand, two miles east of Cromer and sometimes known as ‘the village of millionaires’. Overstrand became popular with the rich wanting a coastal retreat from London in the late 19th century. Two large houses with gardens were designed by the architect Edwin Lutyens, both in 1899 – Overstrand Hall and the Pleasaunce.

Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll had a long-standing collaboration and it’s tempting to imagine Jekyll planting her friend Ellen’s new plant in Overstrand and a few years later Dr Bach finding it. However, there is no direct evidence of any involvement of Gertrude Jekyll in either of Lutyens’ Overstrand gardens, although the Rothschild Archive states that she did work on the design of the Pleasanunce garden (Lady Battersea was Constance de Rothschild).  And in any case, the original garden design came 9 years before the seeds sent back by Wilson arrived in England and 15 years before the recognition of the species, C. willmottianum.

However, the Pleasaunce garden continued to be developed by Lady Battersea until her death in 1931, with input from Lutyens (and so, maybe, Jekyll) so it is possible that Jekyll did have a hand in the planting of our Cerato at the Pleasaunce. As a result, the Pleasaunce seems to be the more likely Overstrand option. C. willmottianum still grows in the garden there today, in front of the house, which is now owned by Christian Endeavour Holiday Centres.  Generally there is no public access, but I did manage to get permission to have a look round and take some photos.

The other option, Overstrand Hall, formerly the holiday home of the banking Mills family, is now a residential activity centre run by Kingswood and again, there is no public access.

Apart from Cerato, Dr Bach found six other remedies in or near Cromer – Agrimony, Chicory, Vervain, Centaury, Scleranthus and Oak (the last of these found at Felbrigg, about 2 miles from Cromer). It was while in Cromer that he prepared Clematis by the sun method for the first time – inspired by the abundance of clematis he observed. The cliff path from Overstrand to Cromer still has large areas of Clematis vitalba growing today.

The connection of Dr Bach to Ellen Willmott via Gertrude Jekyll and the Pleasaunce may be tenuous, but Ellen’s importance in his discovery of Cerato is undeniable. Quite simply, if she had not facilitated Ernest Wilson’s trip to China when she did and successfully grown the seeds he sent back, it is very unlikely that the plant would have been in England for Dr Bach to discover in 1930. So next time you’re using Cerato, spare a thought for the often unfairly maligned Ellen Willmott – Miss Cerato.

A version of this article with more photos of Overstrand and the Pleasaunce is available at https://www.cambridge-bach.co.uk/ellen-willmott-miss-cerato/.