t was a stroke of luck that Colonel Stephenson Robert Clarke married Edith Gertrude Godman, who counted among her relatives the galanthophile and plant collector Henry Elwes of Colesbourne Park. When ‘Stephie’ Clarke and Edith moved into their new home, Borde Hill in Sussex, in 1893, Stephie focused “at first on making it a family home and then on the wider landscape”, says Borde Hill’s current head of horticulture, Harry Baldwin. But some ten years in, encouraged by Elwes, the Colonel began to turn his attention to the garden. “He wasn’t interested in plants at first. He loved natural history and ornithology, but you can
