Old Herbaceous: A Novel of the
Garden (Modern Library Gardening)
by Reginald Arkell
Husband Loves Book
Back in print after fifty years
Old Herbaceous is a classic British novel of the garden, with a title
character as outsized and unforgettable as P. G. Wodehouse’s immortal
butler, Jeeves. Born at the dusk of the Victorian era, Bert Pinnegar, an
awkward orphan child with one leg a tad longer than the other, rises from
inauspicious schoolboy days spent picking wildflowers and dodging angry
farmers to become the legendary head gardener “Old Herbaceous,” the
most esteemed flower-show judge in the county and a famed horticultural
wizard capable of producing dazzling April strawberries from the
greenhouse and the exact morning glories his Lady spies on the French

Riviera, “so blue, so blue it positively hurts.” Sprinkled with nuggets of
gardening wisdom, Old Herbaceous is a witty comic portrait of the most
archetypal—and crotchety—head gardener ever to plant a row of bulbs at
a British country house.
This Modern Library edition is published with a new Introduction by
Penelope Hobhouse, a renowned garden designer and lecturer and the
author of numerous gardening books.
Personal Review: Old Herbaceous: A Novel of the Garden
(Modern Library Gardening) by Reginald Arkell
Old Herbaceous was first published in about 1950. It is the fictional
chronicle of the life of Old Herbaceous, the head gardener at an English
manor house. He begins life as a foundling child, early develops a love for
flowers which grow along an abandoned canal, and then becomes a
gardener at the manor house after impressing the Lady of the Manor at a
garden show. Gradually he rises through the ranks of gardeners to
eventually become head gardener.
This book is pleasing for several reasons. First, it helps us understand
what a complex thing an English manor house must have been, with its
ranks of servants and underlings. Secondly, it has beautiful descriptions of
flowers, shrubs, trees, and other elements of the English countryside.
Finally, its a great social history in microcosm of the changes England
underwent from the 1870s through the World War II era.
In many ways Old Herbaceous is another Goodbye Mr. Chips: a short
quiet book about a seemingly unimportant individual who turns out to be
much more than he appears.
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