Mirabel Osler

Mirabel Osler (1925 - 20 October, 2016) was an English writer and garden designer. She was a regular contributor to Hortus: A Gardening Journal.

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Quotes

... pick up one of those superb books such as Private Gardens of England, by Penelope Hobhouse, on a wild, wet afternoon in February when the wind is shrilling outside, moaning through the gaps and spattering the window with rain. Turn to a picture of Saling Hall showing blues and silvers against the static severity of evergreens, or see the black and white photographs of roses, cobbles and fennel at Chilcombe, in which there's a table and chairs glimpsed through an open door in the garden wall. Books such as these are indeed a strong element of the whole pleasure of gardening; they need to be devoured and mulled over as well as those which are carried round in an earthy hand as vital advice flows out on what to do with five hundred slugs at the delphiniums.
- A Gentle Plea for Chaos. A&C Black. 2012. pp. 2–3. ISBN 9781408837139. (192 pages; 1st edition 1989)

Ideally, Ludlow should be approached from the heights of Whitcliffe Common for views of its castle and the church of St. Laurence among the cluttered roofs and chimneys, the rosy-pink bricks, the half-timbered houses and somber gray stone of the ancient town walls. The Teme River circling the town is spanned by the medieval Ludford and Dinham bridges — the latter immortalized in paintings by J. M. W. Turner. From where I live, beside the renovated 12th-century chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a gnarled magnolia tree, I cross Dinham Bridge to wander alongside water meadows of buttercups, meadowsweet, white hawthorn and grazing cattle. Swans glide on the river, the water roars and tumbles over the weir, and the mercurial flight of a kingfisher appears like a hallucination.
- (September 26, 1999) "Far in a Shropshire Village". The New York Times: 15B, Section 6. (Dunham Bridge was designed by John Straphen.)

Living in Shropshire after we married, where we had a small farm with neither electricity nor mains water and where each spring a stallion bedecked with ribbons walked the lanes servicing the mares, we often made the journey between the country and London, a slow and un-trafficky journey through the Cotswolds before the age of motorways.
- The Rain Tree: A Memoir. A&C Black. 2012. p. PA29. ISBN 9781408822210. (272 pages; 1st edition 2011)