Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life: The Plants and PlacesThat Inspired the Classic Children’s Tales by

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Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life: The Plants and PlacesThat Inspired the Classic Children’s Tales
by Marta McDowell

Obviously, this is a biography about the part of Beatrix Potter’s life that started when she moved to the Lake District and bought a house called Hill Top. But it’s more than that. It’s also a biography of her garden. In part 1 of the book, we learn about her gardens and her role as a gardener. In part 2, we are taken on a tour of her garden throughout a year, seeing what plants are blooming when and when vegetables and animals on her farm would be in play. In part 3, there are lists of the exact plants she had in her garden, a great gardening resource.

I visited Hill Top, her house, just two years ago (April 2012). When I saw this book in the library, I grabbed it. I liked Beatrix Potter’s characters and stories when I was a child (some of them scared me, but in a good way). This month's theme at the Carpe Librum swap-bot group was biographies, so that was the excuse I needed to read this!

It was such a lovely read! It was unfortunate, because it made me want to pick up and travel back to England, but it was worth reading anyway. I knew a bit about Beatrix Potter because of the movie, the visit to her home, and Wikipedia. But this was a great look at the gardening side of her and how things she saw directly related to her paintings, characters, and stories. There are plenty of illustrations and photos throughout the book. And my favorite parts were showing the plants and animals present in her garden that show up in her children’s stories. The author points out what plants would have earned her attention at different times of the year and which ones show up in her drawings—either as part of the plot or nestled in with others on the corner of a page. It was also really great to see a side of Beatrix that was not just her art and writing. She truly loved nature and the Lake District and that is so clear in this book.

Some quotes that caught my eye:
“ With her father, Beatrix visited art galleries and the studio of his friend, successful society painter Sir John Everett Millais. Rupert Potter, an accomplished amateur photographer, shot sitters and landscape background for Millais, a great help to a painter who spent much of his time in the studio rather than en plein air. In later years, Beatrix wrote, ‘When I was young it was still the fashion to admire Pre Raphaelites. Their meticulous copying of flowers & plants… influenced me.’”
(Pre-Raph art is my FAVORITE!)

“It is easy to envision a different path for Beatrix Potter. With more encouragement at Kew or the Linnean Society she might have become an illustrator of botanical books, in the legion of Victorian women who painted plants. Ever she could see it. To her cousin Edith Gaddum’s ten-year-old son Walter, she wrote ‘I have been drawing funguses very hard, I think some day they will be put in a book but it will be a dull one to read.’”

“Speaking of thievery, like many a guilty gardener before and since, Beatrix added to her plant palette with occasional pilfering. After all, ‘Mrs. Satterthwaite says stolen plants always grow.’”

“Gardening can be described as a hole one digs in the ground into which to shovel funds.”

“Beatrix would easily recognize Kensington Gardens. The Broad Walk is still anchored by Round Pond. The Flower Walk blooms, and birds sing in the shade trees….It is still full of children and ‘children-who-never-grow-up,’ as Beatrix once called herself, an allusion to another children’s hero, peter Pan, who resided in Kensington Gardens in a J.M. Barrie book.”


I don’t read much nonfiction and even fewer of them are biographies. But every time I read a biography, I come out changed and inspired and full of lots of thoughts. It’s amazing to get into their minds and lives. I honestly don’t know why I don’t read more biographies and autobiographies! Okay, yes I do. I adore fiction so much and there’s just not enough time to read everything. If I could, I’d read ALL THE BOOKS!

My day in Beatrix Potter country (visiting the Lake District and Hill Top house): http://www.kintailscape.com/travel/?p=407