Sarah Clare Raven (born 1963)[1] is an English gardener, writer and television presenter.
She was born in Cambridge, the daughter of John Earle Raven (d. 1980),[2] a classics don and Senior Tutor at King's College, Cambridge,[3] by his wife Faith née Smith (Constance Faith Alethea Hugh Smith[4]), a daughter of Owen Hugh Smith (1869–1958).[5]
Raven graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in history and then trained as a doctor at the University of London.[6]
She is married to writer Adam Nicolson, 5th Lord Carnock (a title he does not use) as his second wife, and has two daughters with him, plus three stepsons from his previous marriage. Her family's move to a small farm in Sussex was depicted in Nicolson's book Perch Farm: A New Life.[7]
She now runs a garden and cookery school at Perch Hill, and is a guest presenter on BBC Two's Gardeners' World.[8] She writes a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph. The celebrated gardener Christopher Lloyd, a near-neighbour of the Nicolsons at Great Dixter, described Raven in the mid 1990s as "really energetic and creative ... promot[ing] a more dynamic and showy style of gardening than has been fashionable for many years".[9]
Raven's publications include The Cutting Garden, The Bold and the Beautiful Garden, The Great Vegetable Plot and Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook (U.S. title: In Season) which was named Cookery Book of the Year by the Food Writers' Guild in 2008.[10]