English garden designer, florist and writer Constance Spry was BOTD in 1886. Born Constance Fletcher in Derby, Derbyshire, she moved to Ireland to train as a nurse, later working for the Irish Women’s National Health Organisation. In 1910, she married James Heppell Marr, with whom she had a son. During World War One, she was appointed secretary of the Dublin Red Cross. She left her husband in 1916, moving with her son to England where she worked as a welfare supervisor for the Ministry of Aircraft Production. After the war, she became a school headmistress, instructing teenaged factory workers in cookery, dressmaking and flower arranging. After her divorce from Marr was finalised, she married Henry Spry in 1926, in what biographers are generally agreed was a marriage of convenience, allowing her to pursue discreet affairs with women. The following year, she began a relationship with the androgynous artist Gluck. Inspired by Gluck, she opened her first flower shop in London in 1928, causing a sensation with her use of wildflowers, weeds and grasses in her arrangements. By 1934, she was running two shops in central London, employing a staff of 70 people and publishing several bestselling books on the art of flower arranging. Her floral arrangements for the weddings of the Duke of Gloucester, Princess Elizabeth and (most famously) the Duke and Duchess of Windsor brought her significant publicity, leading to a successful tour of the United States. During World War Two, she returned to public education, travelling through Britain on a lecture tour, encouraging families to grow and eat their own food. After the war, she opened a domestic science school with Le Cordon Bleu chef Rosemary Hume, attracting publicity for their co-creation of Coronation Chicken, a spiced chicken dish created for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. A successful cookery book, co-authored with Hume, followed in 1956. Her relationship with Gluck ended suddenly in 1936 after Gluck pursued an affair with another woman. She remained married to Spry until her death in 1960, aged 73.