Christopher Lloyd (gardener)

Christopher Lloyd
Born	March 2, 1921 East Sussex, United Kingdom
Died	January 27, 2006 Hastings, United Kingdom
Education	Rugby School, King's College, Cambridge, Wye College

Christopher Hamilton Lloyd, OBE (2 March 1921 – 27 January 2006) was a British gardener and author. He was the 20th-century chronicler for the heavily planted, labour-intensive, country garden.

Lloyd was born in Great Dixter, into an upper-middle-class family, the youngest of six children. In 1910, his father, Nathaniel Lloyd (an Arts and Crafts designer of posters and other images for confectionery companies), purchased Great Dixter, a manor house in Northiam, East Sussex near the south coast of England. Edwin Lutyens was hired to renovate and extend the house and advise on the structure of the garden. Nathaniel Lloyd loved gardens, designed some of the garden himself, and imparted that love to his son. Lloyd learned the skills required of a gardener from his mother Daisy, who did the actual gardening and who introduced him to Gertrude Jekyll.

After Rugby School, he attended King's College, Cambridge, where he read modern languages before entering the Army during World War II. After the war he received his bachelors in Decorative Horticulture (Designing and Planning) from Wye College, University of London, in 1949. He stayed on there as an assistant lecturer in horticulture until 1954.

In 1954, Lloyd moved home to Great Dixter and set up a nursery, specialising in unusual plants. He regularly opened the house and gardens to the public.

In 1979 Lloyd received the Victoria Medal of Honour, the highest award of the Royal Horticultural Society, for his promotion of gardening and his extensive work on their Floral Committee. Lloyd was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Open University in 1996 and was appointed as an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2000.

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