Biennials are usually flowering plants that have a two-year life cycle. Like an annual, once the plant has completed its life cycle, it will re-seed and then die.
Miss Ellen Willmott, an erudite plants-woman, would scatter invasive annual sea holly, Eryngium giganteum, on people s gardens when they weren t looking.
When she was 13, the Willmotts moved from London to Warley Place in Essex, a Queen Anne mansion surrounded by 33 acres of land. Here the lively and sociable Ellen led a charmed life.