on London's open spaces. Amherst wrote a number of scholarly papers on garden history, as well as growing unusual plants in her own garden and collecting specimens on trips abroad for Kew Gardens. Books The History of Gardening in England (1896, as Alicia M. T. Amherst) Children's Gardens (1902, as the Hon'ble Mrs. Evelyn Cecil) London Parks and Gardens (1907, as the Hon'ble Mrs. Evelyn Cecil; with illustrations by Lady Victoria Manners) Children and Gardens (1908) Wild Flowers of the Great Dominions of the British Empire (Macmillan, 1935, as the Lady Rockley) Some Canadian Wildflowers: Being the First Part of Wild Flowers of the Great Dominions of the British Empire (1937, as Lady Rockley) Historic Gardens of England (1938, as Mrs. Evelyn Cecil) Other botanical and horticultural activities Amherst's collecting expeditions took her to Mozambique and South Africa (1899), Rhodesia (1900), and Ceylon, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada (1927). This was a period when horticultural schools were being founded in England, and Amherst advocated on behalf of women entering the field. Amherst was also known as a fine artist of botanical and other subjects. In 1900, her husband published On the Eve of the War: A Narrative of Impressions During a Journey in Cape Colony, the Free State, the Transvaal, Natal, and Rhodesia and several of its illustrations were from sketches or photographs by Amherst. She took part in a campaign to save the Chelsea Physic Garden, a London garden dating back to 1673. She sat on its management committee, and the garden now holds her archive. Honours and legacy Amherst was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1918. She was the only woman to receive the Freedom of the Worshipful Company of Gardeners, a London livery company (a kind of trade association or guild) that was chartered in 1605. The plant Hebe 'Alicia Amherst'—a purple-flowered cultivar synonymous with H. veitchii as well as a plant species Kaempferia ceciliae N.E.Br. (family Zingiberaceae) —were named after her. A first biography, The Well-Connected Gardener: A Biography of Alicia Amherst, Founder of Garden History, was published in 2010. Notes and references 1865 births 1941 deaths British garden writers 20th-century English writers 19th-century English writers People from Poole Daughters of barons Rockley 19th-century English women writers 20th-century English women writers