The Rude Boy sculpture in the garden at Steephill, c.1913 Photo courtesy of Dudley Graeme

It combines prescriptive gardening advice with autobiography. She admits that, although she had longed to live in the country, ‘I knew nothing at all of gardening; never did anyone know less.’ When she first arrived at the ‘rented three shaggy acres of ground in Surrey’,  it took her some time to decide to tame the wilderness. In an entertaining narrative, she describes her journey from ignorance of plants themselves, soil types and manures, planting aspects and pruning regimes, to hands-on expertise and wild enthusiasm.    The Garden of Ignorance  launched her horticultural career and she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1913,  a rare honour for a woman garden writer.  So perhaps it is a sign of the book’s continuing appeal that it was republished by CUP in January 2017.

from the Marion Cran Album Collection. Courtesy of R.H.S. Lindley Library, London.

Unfortunately success in publication was not matched by success in her private life.  George  met someone else:  “one less belligerent, an alien beggar maid much younger and nicer-looking than this old wife” as Marion put it.  After their  divorce in 1919 she could no longer afford the rent at Steephill,  and had to find somewhere else to live.  Luckily some mutual friends were also househunting and they told her about Coggers, an abandoned house they had seen near Benenden in Kent.  Their description made her interested and Marion fell for the 14thc house as soon as she saw it, despite the terrible state it was in.  She described later how the house had been used as a cowshed, had resident swallows, bats and squirrels, crumbling plaster,  and  trees growing  through the floor boards of the main living room.

Marion outside Coggers. Photo from her album now in the Lindley Library

From The Garden of Experience, 1922

Her second horticultural book The Garden of Experience (1921), made her a household name in England and earned her enough money to be able to restore Coggers properly.  It became her refuge from the world and a base from which to travel and write. Indeed the restoration was the subject of her  next book The Story of My Ruin (1924), which was about the end of her marriage and the restoration of the house.

From The Garden of Experience, 1922

From The Garden of Experience, 1922

While she was working on Coggers she was offered the chance to do some radio talks about gardening on  2LO, which predated the foundation of the BBC. When the first of her Gardening Chats was broadcast on 6th August 1923  for a fee of 5 guineas, it made her the first gardening broadcaster.

She also contributed to the newfangled Woman’s Hour but these early years in radio were very much an experiment, with no fixed schedule or presenters.  As things settled down lots of other people, including Vita Sackville-West, were trialled for the gardening slot, but in the end  it was “the mellifluous Mr Middleton” who finally became the voice of horticulture on the radio.

Nevertheless Marion Cran had popular appeal because she never patronized her audience, but always tried to speak as   “a learner talking to fellow-learners”, and she continued to make the occasional broadcast. These  early broadcasts were subsequently  published as Garden Talks (1925)  and along with contribution from other garden writers and broadcasters including Vita Sackville-West, Beverley Nichols and Compton Mackenzie another collection of these was edited by Nicholls  as  How Does Your Garden Grow? in 1935.

The start of an article from Britannia & Eve, Oct 26 1928

Britannia & Eve 9 Nov 1928

In 1925 Cran also became garden editor for The Queen magazine, where she remained until 1930  but she was also contributing to a whole range of other magazines including Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, House and Garden, Homes and Gardens, Britannia & Eve and Women’s Magazine,  as well as newspapers such as The Bystander, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Star, and The Standard.