Victoria Summerley

Victoria Summerley was born in Surrey but moved to Scotland at the age of 10. She supports Scotland at rugby, England at cricket, and Andy Murray all the time. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1977 and joined the Evening News in Edinburgh, completing the NCTJ certificate to qualify formally as a journalist. She was the first woman ever to lay out pages on the Evening News, and the first female journalist to sit on the paper's back bench.

Since then, she has worked on The Times Higher Education Supplement, the Evening Standard, The Observer, and most recently The Independent where she was executive editor, and deputy editor of the i newspaper.

Victoria has always been a keen gardener, but first wrote about gardening when she was sent by Max Hastings, then editor of the Evening Standard, to interview Sir Terence Conran about his design for the Evening Standard Chelsea Flower Show garden in 1999. She wrote numerous articles about gardening and related issues while on The Independent, winning the prestigious Journalist of the Year award from the Garden Media Guild in 2010.

In 2007, Victoria opened her London garden for the National Garden Scheme. Following the death of her husband, the journalist Craig Orr, from Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in 2008, she became a passionate advocate for the work of the NGS in raising money for palliative care charities.

When she quit the Independent in 2012, her intention was to move to the country and spend all her time in the garden. However, she was persuaded by Helen Griffin, commissioning editor at Frances Lincoln, to write The Secret Gardens of Cotswolds, and subsequently Great Gardens of London and The Secret Gardeners, working with photographer Hugo Rittson Thomas.

She lives in the Cotswolds and has a son and a daughter.