Hobhouse walked through Tuscany and taught herself gardening by examples of the Tuscan villa gardens she saw; she went on to be a garden writer and designer, publishing many books on the subject. She started work at Hadspen House, Somerset until leaving in 1979. Until 1993 she was in charge of Tintinhull House gardens also in Somerset. In 1996 she hosted a television series for Home & GardenTelevision in the USA. Her publications include; Colour in Your Garden, Plants in Garden History,Penelope Hobhouse on Gardening', Penelope Hobhouse's Garden Designs, and Penelope Hobhouse's Natural Planting. Hobhouse is "a fixture in the minds of gardeners who love rooms and bones – the paths and walls and satisfying verticals that form the skeleton of a garden." She has designed gardens in England, Scotland, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and the United States. They include a garden for Elizabeth the Queen Mother, at Walmer Castle in Kent, 'The Country Garden' for the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley, a renaissance-style garden in Italy, the Upper Walled Garden at Aberglasney, in Carmarthenshire, a herb garden for the New York Botanical Garden, and a garden for the fashion designer, Jil Sander, in Germany. In 1996, she designed an English cottage garden for Steve Jobs' Woodside home, a perfect fit for Tudor-style architecture. She is an associate editor of Gardens Illustrated'' magazine. She has taught at the University of Essex. She then lived in Bettiscombe, Dorset until 2008. She then moved in September 2008 back to Hadspen, where she is started a new garden outside her quarters which are in the yard. Her new garden is a south facing and enclosure at the back of some converted stables surrounded by mature box hedging. This may be a challenge as her Bettiscombe garden was a good deal warmer than this one.
Family
Hobhouse married firstly, 17 May 1952 Paul Rodbard Hobhouse, son of Sir Arthur Hobhouse, of Castle Cary, Somerset; this marriage was dissolved in 1983, and she left the garden she had restored at the Hobhouse seat, Hadspen, Somerset. By Paul Hobhouse she had one daughter, Georgina Catherine, and two sons, Niall Alexander and David Paul. She moved to Tintinhull and met her second husband, Prof. John Melville Malins, at a Garden History Society meeting; they married in 1983, he died in 1992.
