An Author and a Gardener

In August 1937 a small group of Edith Wharton’s intimate friends gathered to pay their last respects at her funeral in France. Among that small group of people was her friend for many years, Lawrence ‘Johnnie’ Johnston, the creator of two famous gardens, at Hidcote Manor, Gloucestershire, in England and Serre de la Madone, Menton, on the Côte d’Azur in the south of France. Wharton and Johnston shared not only a love of nature and gardens but also a shared experience of life. Both were private pe