Sarah Raven

Sarah Clare Raven (born 3 February 1963)[1] is an English gardener, cook and writer.

Biography

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Early life

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Raven was born in Marylebone, the daughter of John Earle Raven (d. 1980),[2] a classics don and Senior Tutor at King's College, Cambridge,[3] and his wife Faith née Hugh Smith (Constance Faith Alethea Hugh Smith[4]), a daughter of Owen Hugh Smith (1869–1958).[5]

Raven graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in history and then trained as a doctor at the University of London.[6]

Company

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She runs a mail-order company, specialising in cutting plants. The gardener Christopher Lloyd, a near-neighbour at Great Dixter, described Raven in the mid-1990s as "really energetic and creative ... promot[ing] a more dynamic and showy style of gardening than has been fashionable for many years".[7]

Publications

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Raven's publications include The Cutting Garden, The Bold and Brilliant Garden, The Great Vegetable Plot, Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook (U.S. title: In Season) which was named Cookery Book of the Year by the Guild of Food Writers in 2008.[8] and A Year Full of Flowers which describes her garden at Perch Hill in Sussex.[9] In 2011, she published a monumental book on Wild Flowers, with photographs by Jonathan Buckley, who has worked with her on most of her books. Sissinghurst: Vita Sackville-West and the Creation of a Garden was published in November 2014.

Broadcasting

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A BBC2 television series called Bees, Butterflies and Blooms, which she presented, focusing on the national decline in pollinating insects and championing nectar-rich flowers as a way of saving them, was broadcast in February 2012. She presented an episode of Great British Garden Revival which aired on BBC Two in 2014.[10]

Personal life

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She is married to writer Adam Nicolson, and has two daughters with him, plus three stepsons from his previous marriage. Her family's move to a small farm in Sussex was depicted in Nicolson's book Perch Hill: A New Life.[11]

Awards

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In 2021 she won the Garden Media Guild award for Best Radio Broadcast or Podcast for her "Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange" podcast with Arthur Parkinson. [12]

Publications

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  • The Cutting Garden
  • The Bold and Brilliant Garden
  • The Great Vegetable Plot
  • Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook (U.S. title: In Season)
  • A Year Full of Flowers
  • Wild Flowers (2011) – with photographs by Jonathan Buckley
  • Sissinghurst: Vita Sackville-West and the Creation of a Garden (2014)

References

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  1. ^ Her middle name Clare is found at Lundy, Darryl. "p. 20654 § 206532 database". The Peerage.[unreliable source].
  2. ^ Date of death taken from "A Rum Affair" New York Times Book Review], which has the first chapter of Karl Sabbagh, A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  3. ^ "Gardener's world". The Guardian. London. 3 November 2005.
  4. ^ Lundy, Darryl. "p. 17294 § 172931 : Constance Faith Alethea Hugh Smith". The Peerage.[unreliable source]
  5. ^ Andrew Purvis (16 November 2008). "Christmas at Sissinghurst: While visitors to the gardens peer through the windows, Sarah Raven cooks an early Christmas lunch in her national trust kitchen". London: The Observer: Observer Food Monthly. Retrieved 23 November 2008.
  6. ^ BBC – Press Office – Sarah Raven. The original of this reference is no longer available, but the link is to an archived version at the Internet Wayback Machine. Her current BBC biography has no educational background for her.
  7. ^ Letter to Beth Chatto, 29 October 1996 in Chatto & Lloyd (1998) Dear Friend & Gardener
  8. ^ Guild of Food Writers
  9. ^ Archived 25 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ^ Cumming, Ed (12 November 2013). "Time for a Great British Garden Revival". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 16 November 2013.
  11. ^ Penguin Books, 2000. ISBN 0-14-029089-3
  12. ^ "Winners 2021".
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