Growing plants from seed

Faber Paperbacks 1978. 144 p. 19.3 x 12.4 x 1.5 cm, Mycket gott skick. Geoffrey was very interested in gardening and this could have been part of the motive for his brother. Geoffrey was an active member of the Royal Horticultural Society, attending its meetings very regularly. Quite frequently, he, Richard and their niece went to the shows together.

Some years later, Richard noticed a spontaneous hybrid of Abutilon in his brother?s garden. Christopher Brickell named it A.?Suntensis? and it is still a popular shrub.

I have had the great privilege of corresponding with a close relative, but neither she nor her mother can tell me why Richard switched to horticulture. Other persons who knew him are also at a loss. I assume it is connected with his meeting one or more influential people who affected his thinking beside his brother Geoffrey.


Garden space shrank as towns grew more congested and land more valuable yet people still wanted something green and fresh in their lives. What better than a plant which grew right in your living room? Rochford?s ideas took him way past the outmoded and almost comic aspidistras of popular renown.

At the nursery, house-plants were affectionately known as ?Tom?s weeds?. In 1961, Gorer and Rochford put out a useful book on the care of these plants: The Rochford Book of House plants. Tom?s son Thomas Rochford IV, now a professor of computer science at a college in Cambridge, remembers Gorer as a figure from his early life. The children called him somewhat irreverently ?Old Weedy? because of his proclivity for growing his treasures among weeds in odd patches of his garden.

They were in awe of his knowledge but found it hard to get him to talk about anything other than plants. His niece also commented on that aspect of his personality. They were not aware of his previous musical career. Some of his authority came from having seen the house-plants, which were tender and had to be coddled a bit, in their native habitat.

Dr Rochford recalls that Gorer had interesting modern paintings on his walls, in particular, two by the modernist Francis Bacon. These valuable possessions contrasted with the extremely messy house which Gorer inhabited. He also knew that Gorer was very interested in the great essayist Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, and very knowledgable about Gorhambury, Lord Verulam?s estate. His interest led him to write about the rockery at Gorhambury with John Harvey.

Rochford thought there could have been a nexus in Gorer?s mind about the two Francis Bacons, with possibly occult overtones. The modern painter was a distant, collateral descendant of Lord Verulam. He led what might be called a very ?rackety ? life, but in spite of that lived to be 83. Gorer had avant garde artistic friends in London, both before and after he was at Cambridge, possibly influenced by his mother.

Bacon reached London in 1934, soon after Gorer came down. They were roughly contemporaries in age.

Richard Gorer wrote