Beverley Nichols from Bower Ashton

Nichols was born in Bower Ashton, Bristol, on September 9, 1898. Beverley’s parents, John Nichols and Pauline Shalders had three boys, Paul, Alan and then John Beverley, who, as he grew up, was determined to be famous in some way. He was educated at Marlborough and Balliol, wrote his first novel, Prelude, when he was 22, and by the late ‘20s was rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous of the day.

One diary entry from the time — and one that was far from unusual — reads:

‘Breakfast with Lloyd George

Lunch with Diaghalev

Tea with Sean O’Casey

Cocktails with George Gershwin

Dinner at the Garrick Club with H.G. Wells.’

He was a fine pianist but adored flowers since making his first daisy chain as a little boy. In Garden Open Today (1963), he thought what fun it would be if he could pay for gardeners who couldn’t afford to go abroad to see the wild mauve irises around Nazareth, the bougainvillea on the walls of Tangiers, the golden ferns of Trinidad, the golden mimosa in Australia, and the white orchids in the mountains of Darjeeling.

Minor events like the First World War failed to dampen his enthusiasm  he was wounded and being carried by stretcher along the North-West Frontier when he spotted his first wild striped pink and white tulips, like the ones in old Dutch flower paintings. In Coffu, he found cascades of Stembergia daffodils; in Portugal he was delighted to find hoop-petticoat daffodils, just six inches tall with flowers no bigger than a thimble.

Down The Garden Path was dedicated to ‘Marie Rose Antoinette Catherine de Robert d’Aqueria de Rochegude d’Erlanger, whose charms are as gay and numerous as her names’. He was invited to stay with her in Venice, but she mixed up the dates. He found his room covered in thousands of pieces of glittering multi-coloured glass from Venetian chandeliers, waiting to be put together! Later, she invited herself to stay with Beverley at his Down-The-Garden-Path cottage at Glatton, which rather alarmed him as there was only well water, one small bathroom and no room for a maid. But although she could be as grand as the Queen of Sheba, she fell for its charms and adapted immediately.

His garden at Glatton was full of flowers in summer, and with snowdrops in February. He would gather a big bunch and arrange them in a bowl on a circle of mirror, so that he could see not only reflections inside the flowers, but twice as many as he’d picked.

He also loved cats, and had six, called One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Seven. He missed out Six, as it wouldn’t have been quite nice to call ‘Sick! Sick! Sick!’ at the end of the day!

‘Although he was a complicated man, it doesn’t show in his garden books’ said one Nichols fan, ‘You have to read his autobiographies, The Unforgiving Minute and Father Figure, which is quite outrageous, to find the real man. Even then you’re not quite sure.

Some idea of the precious Nichols style comes in Garden Open Today where he describes the Green Dragon Lily as ‘a regallily powdered with the dust of emeralds, flowering by moonlight in a green glade’. He was also noted for playing Chopin to a white vase full of freshly picked apple blossom.

The blossom seemed to enjoy the recital - ‘The sunlight danced over the keys, the apple-blossom swayed, ever so slightly’ he wrote.

When he died, his ashes were scattered at his beloved Glatton, followed by a memorial service at St Paul’s, Covent Garden, two months later on November 16 -  the 50th anniversary of the publication of Down The Garden Path. Derek Jacobi, Michael Hordern, Patrick Ryecart, Mervyn Stockwood and Liz Robertson were there remembering him that day, and Frances Day and John Mills sang ‘Little White Room’ from Floodlight, a 1938 revue set to Beverley’s music and lyrics.