Mirabel Osler

Mirabel Osler was an English writer and garden designer. Her book A Gentle Plea for Chaos, based on her experiences in her garden in Shropshire, was said to send "a blast of fresh air through the stuffy rooms of the English gardening world when it was first published."

Mirabel was born Mirabel E E Birnstingl in 1925 in London. She was the daughter of Harry Joseph Birnstingl and Phyllis Taylor Reid. Her stepfather was the author and journalist Aylmer Vallance. She married Michael Julian Osler on 5 April 1951 and they lived in Thailand and Corfu before returning to live in Shropshire. Michael died on 26 April 1989. They had one son and two daughters (the youngest, Sureen, was adopted).

She wrote regularly for the garden magazine Hortus.

She died in Hereford County Hospital on October 20th 2016 aged 91.

• Mirabel won the Sinclair Consumer Press Garden Writer of the Year Award in 1988.
• Mirabel won the Journalist of the Year Award from the Garden Writers Guild in 2003

• "Larkcom is gardening's cream of the crop". PressGazette. December 19, 2003. Retrieved May 20, 2012.