LADY O'NEILL OF MAINE:JEAN, LADY O'Neill of Maine, who has died at the age of 93, was the widow of Terence O'Neill, the fourth prime minister of Northern Ireland.
She was the daughter of William Whitaker of Pylewell Park near Lymington in Hampshire. It was a house with a historic garden that had been originally laid out in the 17th century and had a frost-free climate which made possible the cultivation of rare specimens.
She was encouraged as a child to learn to identify plants, an ability at which she excelled and kept throughout her life.
When she was grown-up, she and a friend went on a tour of the Balkans where they were accosted by bandits in Bulgaria; they escaped in their car which then had a puncture.
Fortunately, they had just succeeded in changing the wheel by the time the bandits caught up with them. The photographs she took on this trip were used, a few years ago, to assist in the restoration of some Romanian monasteries. When war broke out, she worked with a voluntary aid detachment at Grimsby and then at the Royal Naval Hospital at Gosport and in 1944 married Terence O'Neill, who was an officer in the Irish Guards.
Terence O'Neill's father, who had been MP for Mid-Antrim, was killed in France in November, 1914. His grandfather was Lord O'Neill of Shane's Castle.
In 1945, Terence and Jean O'Neill came to live at the rectory near Ahoghill, Co Antrim.
In a byelection the next year, he was returned to Stormont as the unionist MP for Bannside. Ten years later, he was minister of home affairs and then minister of finance.
In 1963, he succeeded Lord Brookeborough as prime minister. Besides promoting economic development, he was determined to improve community relations and remove discrimination within Northern Ireland. He was the first prime minister of Northern Ireland to visit a Catholic school and he invited then taoiseach Seán Lemass for talks in Belfast - Ian Paisley and his supporters threw snowballs at Lemass's car.
O'Neill met strong opposition from his own party. In 1968 there were marches by the Civil Rights Association which, in spite of a programme of reforms, were continued by the People's Democracy. He called a general election but this only consolidated his critics within the Ulster Unionist Party and he resigned in 1969.
Jean O'Neill was always a supportive wife - she once launched two ships in a week from the Harland and Wolff shipyard - although she herself was not greatly interested in politics.
However, she overcame her diffidence to charm his supporters and managed to remain on speaking terms with many of his political opponents.
More to her liking was being elected to the chair of the National Trust Gardens Committee. With her knowledge and skill as a gardener, she played a major role in the restoration of Rowallane that had been originally laid out in the first half of the 20th century by Hugh A. Moore.
It is now one of the most important gardens in Ireland. She also advised on the gardens at Mount Stewart, Springhill and Castle Ward.
Articles by her appeared in Country Life, namely one on Bishop Compton, who was a keen gardener at his palace in Fulham in the 18th century. Incidentally, he was the bishop who consented to crown William and Mary king and queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury having refused.
She wrote a book with Elizabeth McClean on Peter Collinson who was an English Quaker and merchant with an intellectual curiosity about the natural world.
His correspondents included Sir Hans Sloane, Linnaeus and Benjamin Franklin and he imported many newly discovered American plants into Britain. The book is to be published by the American Philosophical Society later this year.
After Terence O'Neill retired from Northern Ireland politics, he was made a life peer and he and his wife went to live at Lisle Court Cottage near her old home in Hampshire. There, she created a remarkable garden with many exotic plants especially from Australasia and South America.
Lord O'Neill died in 1991. Jean O'Neill continued to be active in the world of gardening, making many trips abroad from where she brought back seeds that she propagated in her garden.
In her 90th year, she was asked by Sir Ghillean Prance, the former director of Kew, to go with him on one of his trips down the Amazon. On this expedition she caught piranhas and one night found a giant otter asleep on her bed.
Although shy and soft spoken, she had a droll sense of humour and was always self-possessed.
After she was widowed, she was robbed several times, once being tied up by masked men as she was watching Wimbledon. Even when they put an iron on her lap and threatened to heat it up unless she told them where the silver was, she remained calm.
One of the burglars did apologize and later telephoned the police to ensure that she would be set free. Although the silver was never recovered, she received a Christmas card from the thief.
Jean O'Neill was a fellow of the Linnaean Society and a vice-president of the Garden History Society. In 2000, she was awarded the Veitch Gold Medal for her outstanding contribution to the advancement of the science and practice of horticulture.
She is survived by her son and her daughter.
Jean, Lady O'Neill of Maine: born January 16th, 1915; died July 15th, 2008