Eleanor Sophie Sinclair Rohde was born in
Alleppey,
Travancore,
India, on 9 August 1881. She was the daughter of John Rohde, a civil servant in India, and his wife, Isabel Crawford. She was educated at
Cheltenham Ladies College and
St Hilda's College, Oxford. After Oxford, she began her writing career with articles on gardening in magazines, including
The Field,
The Queen,
The Cornhill Magazine and
The Garden. Rohde also worked as a garden designer. One of the most visited gardens that she designed was the herb garden for
Lullingstone Castle in west
Kent, England. Her work did much to encourage the modern popularity of
herb gardens. The work that she is most known for is
The Scented Garden, published in 1931. Her other popular books include,
A Garden of Herbs (1921),
Rose Recipes from Olden Times (1939), and
The Wartime Vegetable Garden.
The Wartime Vegetable Garden was published in 1940 to promote increased food production by the general public during World War II. In her personal life, Rohde was shy, solitary and a strict
vegetarian. ==Selected publications==