Major Lawrence Waterbury Johnston (1871–1958) was a British soldier and garden creator.
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Johnston was born in Paris, France, into a family of wealthy American East Coast stockbrokers from Baltimore. He went to England to study at Trinity College, Cambridge. Soon after his graduation, he became a naturalised British subject. He joined the British Army and served in the Second Boer War and later World War I with the Northumberland Hussars, being commissioned in 1901 and reaching the rank of Major.
He travelled extensively and was interested in the arts. Johnston is remembered today for the garden design he created at Hidcote Manor Garden, now in the care of the National Trust. He and his mother, Gertrude Winthrop, bought Hidcote Manor in 1907, and he started a programme of 40 years' work on the garden. An enthusiastic plant collector, he sponsored and undertook several expeditions in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America to bring back rare specimens.
He was a close friend of socialite garden designer Norah Lindsay whose home was nearby in Sutton Courtenay Manor, Oxfordshire.[1]
After bequeathing his Hidcote estate to the National Trust, Johnston moved to France in 1948. At the time of his death in 1958 he was working on another garden at Serre de la Madone, Menton, which he left to Nancy Lindsay, the daughter of Norah Lindsay.[2]
A rose — the bright yellow semi-double climber "Lawrence Johnston" — bears his name.