Abstract
‘You really are a public benefactor’, Vita Sackville-West was told in 1951 by her editor from the Observer after he read some of the letters she received following up the weekly horticultural columns she wrote between 1946 and 1961. Drawing on these botanical articles, I wish to highlight how Sackville-West circulated her own ‘gardening philosophy » through the press, ultimately claiming her ‘territory’ compared to other gardening correspondents. Transmitting botanical knowledge stemmed from her own experiments in the gardens of Long Barn and Sissingurst, Kent. Such practicality reveals a humble approach: not only did Sackville-West embrace being an amateur, but she also aimed at reaching out to anyone interested in botany. Ultimately, I intend to underline how Sackville-West seeded networks of transmission and knowledge through her chronicles. Not only did she sometimes call for the reader’s advice and open her garden to visitors, but transmission became truly reciprocal as she was sent material by her readers, be it seeds, pieces of advice, or gardening reports.
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