Jean O'Neill, Baroness O'Neill of the Maine was an English plantswoman and horticulturalist.
24 Facts About Jean O'Neill
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Jean O'Neill was born Katharine Jean Whitaker at 41 Brook Street, Mayfair, London on 16 January 1915.
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Jean O'Neill's parents were William Ingham Whitaker and Hilda Guilhermina.
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Jean O'Neill's father was a landowner and horticulturalist of Pylewell Park, near Lymington, Hampshire.
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Jean O'Neill had four siblings, and grew up at the family estate Pylewell Park, which had extensive gardens which had been developed by her father and grandfather.
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Interested in botany from a young age, O'Neill would follow her father and head gardener when they selected new specimens.
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Jean O'Neill was educated at home alongside her older sisters.
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Jean O'Neill was more interested in gardening and outdoor activities than the London social life, but she travelled to Europe with fellow debutante and friend, Anne Hamilton-Grace, first to Hungary, and then the Balkans by taking an old Ford V8 car from England.
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Jean O'Neill visited her friend, Unity Mitford, in Munich but was horrified by Mitford's Nazi sympathies.
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Jean O'Neill joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment during World War II, nursing the wounded in Grimsby and then the Royal Naval Hospital at Gosport, Hampshire.
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Jean O'Neill was acquainted with Terence O'Neill for a number of years, and while he was serving with the Irish Guards, they married on 4 February 1944 in the Guards' Chapel in Wellington Barracks, London.
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Jean O'Neill was wounded in September 1944, and was evacuated from the Netherlands to Pylewell Park, remaining there until the end of the war.
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Jean O'Neill was a loyal supporter of her husband's political career in Northern Ireland, from his first election to Stormont as an MP in 1946 to his time as Northern Ireland prime minister from 1963 to 1969.
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Jean O'Neill accompanied him on visits to Great Britain, Europe and the United States.
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Jean O'Neill dedicated most of her time to her children, Patrick and Penelope, and to creating a five-acre garden at her home, as well as volunteering with local societies and horticultural groups.
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Jean O'Neill served as chair of the Ballymena Horticultural Society, and was the first president of the Rose Society of Northern Ireland from 1968 to 1975.
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Jean O'Neill wrote articles for numerous journals, including Country Life and The Journal of Garden History, on garden plants and historical gardens.
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For Recreating the period garden edited by Graham Thomas, Jean O'Neill wrote a 27-page article on plants, and she contributed to the Oxford companion to gardens.
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Jean O'Neill's opus was the posthumously published Peter Collinson and the eighteenth-century natural history exchange, a history of the Quaker merchant, Peter Collinson based on 30 years of research by O'Neill.
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Jean O'Neill was involved in the creation of a historically accurate garden based on 17th century planting at Compton Garden, at St Cross Hospital, Winchester while serving as vice-president of the Hampshire Gardens Trust in 1968.
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Jean O'Neill accompanied Ghillean Prance on a plant collecting trip to the Amazon river at age 88.
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Jean O'Neill was a fellow of the Linnean Society, and served as vice-president of the Garden History Society.
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Jean O'Neill was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Veitch Memorial Medal in 2000 in recognition of her contribution to horticultural science and practice.
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Jean O'Neill died on 15 July 2008 in Hampshire following a stroke.