Old Herbaceous: A Novel of the Garden

by Reginald Arkell

Penelope Hobhouse (Introduction)

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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.
  • ISBN10 0812967380
  • ISBN13 9780812967388
  • Publish Date 15 April 2003 (first published 1 September 2001)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Publisher Random House USA Inc
  • Imprint Modern Library Inc