Preserving Living History

These two women are preserving gardens and flower species for future generations In My Grandfather's Footsteps

-  CLAIRE SAUL

Since childhood, Lucy Skellorn has known that an imposing portrait hanging in her family home was of her great, great grandfather, eminent Victorian physiologist Sir Michael Foster. She also knew that he was an expert in irises, but when helping to clear the house after the death of her parents, she discovered more.

"I found papers and letters showing that my mother had been searching for some of his cultivars - the irises that he had bred himself," explains Lucy. "He had also brought wild irises from abroad and planted them in his home just outside Cambridge. He was creating a library of lots of different iris species, cataloguing them, identifying similarities and grouping them into subspecies.

"This discovery came at a time when I had decided to return to my native Suffolk to start a family. Back there, while doing some horticultural volunteering, I met a lady who had a collection of Campanulas.

She introduced me to the plant conservation and heritage charity, Plant Heritage, and I learned about their important work in plant conservation, saving cultivated plants before they are lost.