14 Facts About Reginald Farrer

Reginald Farrer published a number of books, although is best known for My Rock Garden.

Reginald Farrer travelled to Asia in search of a variety of plants, many of which he brought back to England and planted near his home village of Clapham, North Yorkshire.

Reginald Farrer developed a passionate and lifelong enthusiasm for high places and the mountain plants that grow there.

Reginald Farrer entered Balliol College, Oxford at 17 years of age and graduated in 1902.

In 1902 Reginald Farrer embarked on the first of his expeditions to Eastern Asia, visiting China, Korea and, particularly Japan.

Reginald Farrer was there for eight months and influenced by Japanese gardening tastes and traditions, he developed his characteristically strong views on rock garden design, 'where naturalism superseded formal artificiality, and where alpine plants were to grow in surroundings which, though ordered by man, copied as far as possible their original habitats'.

Reginald Farrer visited Ceylon in 1908, becoming a Buddhist there.

Reginald Farrer was attracted by the horticultural possibilities of the introduction of new hardy rock plants to the British gardening public.

Many bear his name, though the list would have been longer if Reginald Farrer had not sometimes neglected to collect, as well as plants and seeds, the herbarium specimens necessary for classification and naming.

Reginald Farrer drew many illustrations, often painted in the most uncomfortable of circumstances, which record, not an exact botanical resemblance, but Reginald Farrer's emotional reaction to the plant and its habitat.

Reginald Farrer's collecting trips are particularly interesting when viewed in the context of the global plant exchanges which occurred during British Imperial rule.

Reginald Farrer was known as an eccentric and in one famous incident, Reginald Farrer loaded a shotgun with seeds collected on his foreign travels, and fired them into an inaccessible rock cliff and gorge near the family home in Yorkshire.

Reginald Farrer was a devotee of the novels of Jane Austen and wrote for July 1917 issue of The Quarterly Review an article in celebration of the centenary of her birth.

Reginald Farrer's lasting legacy is a spectacular display of plants from the Himalayas, growing today in a wild display around Ingleborough.