Yorkshire Dales Society adopted the bird’s eye primrose (primula farinosa) as a logo. The plant had been cordially referred to by Reginald Farrer, of Clapham, in his book on Rock Gardens. Dr Bill Mitchell, for many years president of the Society, has long been fascinated by Farrer’s relatively short but active life. He gave a local gorge the appearance of an Asian valley.

Reginald Farrer, botanist extraordinary, was born in 1880, reared at Ingleborough Hall and died in 1920 while seeking alpine plants in a remote part of Burma.

A delicate and lonely lad, Reginald passed many a day in his young life clambering about the crags and scars of Ingleborough, seeking plants. To Farrer, bird’s eye primrose was “my best friend among English wild flowers”. This “gallant little thing” was fragrant, dainty and lovable.

Farrer’s prose style, displayed in many books, was enchanting. He was derisive about people who piled up earth and stuck stones in it. To him, these were Dog’s Graves or Devil’s Lapfuls. In his mature years, he popularised rock-gardening, setting aside many old ideas. His blueprint for rock-gardening insisted that rocks must be placed to resemble a natural run of strata.

I occasionally visited Ingleborough Hall by invitation, or on open days, strolling along a terrace to where a Reginald Farrer monument was set in a small and tidy garden plot. I had to crane my neck to see the statue of a black angel that surmounted it. The only time I photographed the angel was on an open day at the hall.

I persuaded Eddie Percy, who was well-known in the district and had a business in Settle, to pose beside the monument. Eddie had a camera in one hand and, like me, had to crane his neck to see the angel at close quarters. In later years, the angel mysteriously disappeared.

Clapham folk in the 1950s told me of some of Reginald’s eccentricities. He travelled widely. Unlike other plant-hunters of his time, he had not gone through a rigorous training in botanic gardens or nurseries. Weakly as a lad, he had a hare-lip and cleft palate. The palate was concealed behind a bushy moustache.

He had grown up at a time when James Farrer, his father, was rather dull and self-centred. In contrast, Elizabeth, his mother, small and dumpy like Queen Victoria, had a great fondness for plants. Reginald’s letters from Oxford kept her busy tending his rock gardens. She selflessly scrambled up the local screes to collect further plants at Reginald’s bidding.

Reginald made a ‘hanging garden’ on the east side of Ingleborough Lake, which the Farrer family had created when they dammed up Fell Beck. Limestone from the heights of Ingleborough was cunningly fashioned into a rock garden in the grounds of the hall.

He studied the gorge down which Fell Beck flowed to reach Ingleborough Lake. Finding some resemblance between it and a remote Asian valley, he planted bamboos and rhododendrons. In his home village a rock garden surrounded by high walls and containing a potting shed became the Craven Nursery. The shed was for a short time used as an art studio. I was one of those who drew and painted here.

Early in his short life, Reginald had a bad attack of wanderlust. He journeyed to the alpine areas of Europe and the Far East. His mother ensured that, when about to travel far, he had a good supply of peppermint creams, his favourite food. He also arranged to have tinned sausages. They might be consumed, in mist and rain, on a remote mountain in the Far East.

On his last expedition to upper Burma in 1919, Farrer went to the Minsham Mountains which tower from 15,000ft to 17,000ft above difficult terrain. Bitter cold and incessant rain thwarted his search for plants. He contracted diphtheria. The small medicine kit he possessed was not enough to arrest the illness. He died in October, 1920, and was buried near the hill fort at Konglu. His grave was as solitary as the man.

Reginald Farrer had a short but happy life. The memory of him lingers on in the village where he was born and developed his love of plants.