The distinguished nurserywoman Beth Chatto, who has died aged 94, was one of the most influential horticulturists of the past 50 years. Well known and respected for the nursery of unusual plants she started in Essex in 1967, she was also an inspirational writer and lecturer whose great theme was the importance of providing garden plants with an environment as close as possible to their native habitat.

During the 1970s, she won 10 successive gold medals at the RHS Chelsea flower show, where she introduced ecological ideas into garden design, demonstrating the possibilities of natural plant groupings, while also achieving the highest aesthetic standards. In those days nurseries arranged their plants for maximum visual impact regardless of differing plant needs. Chatto’s approach was a revelation and immediately established her significance as a guide to better and more environmentally friendly gardening techniques. She stressed the importance of looking at the whole plant, foliage as well as flowers, and judging the quality of a plant by observing it throughout the seasons.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A dry summer perennial bed with gravel pathways at Beth Chatto’s garden at Elmstead, Essex. Photograph: Alamy

She was born in the village of Good Easter, Essex, the daughter of Bessie (nee Styles) and William Little, both enthusiastic gardeners. Named Betty Diana, she used the name Beth from her 20s onwards. She was educated at Colchester County high school and Hockerill training college for teachers. She had no formal training in horticulture but her marriage in 1943 to Andrew Chatto, a fruit-grower near Ipswich, Suffolk, who made a lifelong study of plants and their habitats, set her on course for her own successful career. With him she started a garden in 1960 on a dry, windswept site at Elmstead Market near Colchester.

Prior to this she had developed skills as a flower arranger, and was a founding member of the Colchester flower club, giving demonstrations throughout Britain. A friendship with the painter Sir Cedric Morris, who introduced her to his rare plants at Benton End in Suffolk, marked the beginning of her interest in the more unusual, and often neglected, perennials suitable for both dry and damp situations. In later years she developed a woodland site, again emphasising plant “suitability” above all other criteria.

Morris’s influence extended beyond the actual plants, opening her eyes to the overall picture, and her frequent visits to Benton were a great source of artistic inspiration. Her garden and nursery, on the gravelly soil at Elmstead Market, soon became a mecca for keen gardeners. Her willingness to share her own eloquently expressed beliefs and her personal charisma made visits unforgettable.

Her books disseminated her ideas to a wider market and she became justly famous, attracting a huge following among aspiring gardeners at a time when only a few German and Dutch nurserymen and designers were beginning to preach a naturalism based on sustainability of plant communities. Chatto stood out for her emphasis on control and appearance and, although accepting their philosophy, she retained doubts about the overall look through the seasons. There was never any room in her garden for sloppiness.

In her books, Chatto, while providing practical suggestions, expounded environmental themes. The Dry Garden (1978), The Damp Garden (1982), Plant Portraits (1985), Beth Chatto’s Garden Notebook (1988), The Green Tapestry (1989) and The Gravel Garden (2000) made her internationally famous.

Letters exchanged with Christopher Lloyd, published as Dear Friend and Gardener (1998), revealed her warm and endearing character, and the book is a moving testimony to a great friendship based not only on gardening, but wider musical and literary interests. The Woodland Garden was published in 2002. She also lectured widely in Britain and the US and wrote scores of articles for British and American horticultural publications.

Highly strung and committed, Chatto could at times be imperious, expecting high standards from her staff and acolytes, and never wavering in her firmly held organic and environmental beliefs. She drove herself to achieve perfection. She was an exacting figure at her nursery, where she remained very hands on, but she inspired genuine devotion in her workers.

She always gave credit to Andrew for teaching her about plant associations in the wild and early on in her gardening life making her realise that plants perform better when their needs are considered. Her whole philosophy was based on this simple premise but she discovered for herself, through experience, how much variation in conditions plants will take. But she also learned that true satisfaction came from combining her deeply felt ecological convictions with creating beauty, surely the aim of all true gardeners? In this she remained remarkable during a period when younger garden designers tended to emphasise plant compatibility at the expense of true artistry.

The gravel garden that she laid out at the end of the 1990s, in what was originally the heavily compacted nursery car park, was perhaps her greatest aesthetic achievement. On the plot, with the low rainfall typical of East Anglia, and free-draining sand and gravel, Chatto determined to create conditions for a range of carefully chosen plants which could survive with no watering, even in the hottest summer.

Its flowerbeds, arranged in curvaceous abstract patterns, contain drought-tolerant perennials, grasses and bulbs designed as plant partners over a long season that extends from early spring into late autumn. It is stunningly beautiful and attracts visitors from all over the world. Sculptural spurges, sedums, verbenas and soaring verbascums are inter-planted with sun-loving tulips, iris, alliums and crocus with a splattering of self-seeding eryngiums and others; it is a “naturalistic” tapestry.

In 1987 Chatto was awarded the Lawrence memorial medal and the Victoria medal of honour by the Royal Horticultural Society, the latter’s highest award to British horticulturists. She received an honorary degree from Essex University the following year, and was presented with the lifetime achievement award of the Garden Writers’ Guild in 1998. She was appointed OBE in 2002. In 2015, the Beth Chatto Education Trust was established to promote her beliefs and give practical advice to future generations of young gardeners.

Andrew died in 1999. Chatto is survived by her daughters, Diana and Mary, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

• Beth Chatto, gardener, born 27 June 1923; died 13 May 2018