Pioneer Information
Born in Winnsboro, South Carolina to landscape architect James Rion and writer Mary Catherine Rion, Hanna Rion attended the College for Women in Columbia, South Carolina and studied musical composition in Berlin, Germany. Influenced by her mother, who authored Ladies’ Southern Florist (1860), and her neighbor, naturalist John Burroughs, Rion wrote The Garden in the Wilderness (1909) and Let’s Make a Flower Garden (1912), describing the making of her home garden located in Port Ewen, New York. The books, illustrated by Rion’s partner Frank Verbeck, honor both cultivated, designed landscapes and wild ones.
Around 1910 Rion relocated to Bermuda, where she maintained a garden and farm at her home, “The Cocoon.” She continued her writing career, contributing articles to House and Garden and The Craftsman on topics including rose cultivation and onion farming. In 1913 she moved to an artist colony in St. Ives, England, and remained in Britain during World War I. In England, Rion worked in a communal wartime vegetable garden; wrote books for adults and children; helped establish eleven maternity hospitals; and was appointed matron of a London hospital in 1917. In 1920 she returned to Bermuda, where she passed away in 1924. Rion is interred in Christ Church, Warwick Parish, Bermuda.
