The camassia bulbs planted in the arboretum last September began to flower in the first week of May. They are Camassia quamash, giving a good gentian-blue stubby spike on an eight- to ten-inch stem. They are supposed to naturalise well in grass, as long as the ground remains moist – as they say, much depends on summer. I planted them in clumps of three and five about eighteen inches or so from the trunks of small trees, avoiding shrubs beneath which the flowers could easily be damaged by low branches. They looked ravishing in long grass among buttercups, lady’s smock (Cardamine pratensis), sweet Cecily, campion, pignut (a low-growing cow-parlsey look-alike), clover, dandelions, bluebells, cowslips, speedwell, daisies and the season’s last few celandines. It’s a rich turf, with more ‘sewn-in’ grasses and motley ‘weeds’ than I can identify, and in May and June it sparkles with all the splendour of a medieval mille-fleurs tapestry.
Delight in this was sadly marred by the sudden death of several young Acer palmatum cultivars, planted a year ago. In April they came into leaf, but then withered after a few days. It wasn’t frost or drought, and I can’t see any signs of mouse- or rabbit-nibbling; each has a tree guard round its young stem. The casualties appear random among the twenty or so different kinds I planted. Why one should perish while its neighbour – perhaps only ten feet away – should prosper, is a mystery.
From the edior’s introduction to HORTUS 90
‘What is your favourite plant?’ is a question I am often asked by non- gardening friends. Gardeners know that it is almost impossible to answer. Each season has its gems, as does each different habitat, and to choose between them means making unreasonable comparisons. But what if it came down to it: you had to choose; you were going to be banished to a desert island, and apart from a few old gramophone records, the Bible and some clean underwear, you were allowed to take just one plant. What would it be?
We have to presume that some sort of food would be available on the island, so no need to take a fruit or veg plant. Even though it is a desert island I cannot imagine it is completely devoid of some sort of greenery to offer shade: there has to be at least one lonely cartoon palm to give some shelter, so no need to take a tree.
As part of keeping up morale we might also feel the need to keep up appearances – we just might have to greet would-be rescuers. So how about a flax plant from which we could raise enough seedlings to make ourselves a linen suit, eventually. Imagine it, sitting on the veranda of the bungalow we have built from whittled pieces of driftwood (assuming a poor frisking job at my port of departure had failed to detect my concealed Swiss Army knife), rocking gently in the chair we have made from bamboo canes crudely lashed together with lianas, sipping some gently intoxicating syrup that we have brewed from the bark of a tree, wondering what to do with all those discs since we weren’t given a record player, and gazing longingly at that set of fresh underwear, wondering whether to save it for Christmas Day, and all this in our homemade crumpled linen suit – how good can life get? Drat, if only we had thought to slip in some indigofera seeds we could have had a blue suit for Sundays.
From ‘Melianthus major: A Desert Island Plant?’’ by Paul Williams
‘A fearsome maze of eerie crags’ is how one guidebook describes La Gomera. That phrase alone would have tempted me.
I kept hearing different accounts of the Canary Islands: their heaving airports, their lava landscapes, the smell of Ambre Solaire on black sand beaches . . . Nobody had said that Spain’s highest mountain (admittedly no Mont Blanc) is on Tenerife, and only one friend, years ago, that La Gomera, twenty miles across the water, manages to include a rain forest in its astonishingly varied flora.
The mid Atlantic tropics, when I thought about it, should have pretty special conditions. Trade Winds refreshing sun-baked soil – fertile, too, with ancient lava – it’s a promising recipe. For someone who avoids hot climates the idea of a misty mountain refuge from the coast was pretty attractive too. Breakfast in the garden, botanising in the clouds (or, if no clouds, with distant views to other islands and the snow-capped Mount Teide), tea by the swimming pool and a late Spanish dinner sounded perfect. It was.
La Gomera has the islands’ biggest remaining area of the peculiar indigenous forest known as laurisilva: 10,000 jungly acres. To call it a rain forest is not quite accurate; strictly speaking it is cloud forest, meaning that the trees collect the moisture from the overladen air; the perpetual drip from their mossy branches, rather than conventional precipitation, doubles the measurable 'rainfall'.
‘Laurel’, Laurus azorica, closely related to bay, is the main theme, supported by half a dozen superficially similar evergreens (the most recognisable being Viburnum rigidum) and the very different tree heather, Erica arborea. In certain exposures at a certain altitude in the hills you are in heather as dense as on a grouse moor – the difference being that it is thirty feet high. One should be there in March to smell it flowering.
From ‘Tradescant’s Diary’ by Hugh Johnson
This year everybody’s talking about Darwin, widely regarded as both a hero of biology and one of history’s greatest thinkers. Not only does 2009 mark two centuries since his birth, but also it’s a hundred and fifty years since the sensational publication of The Origin of Species in November 1859. Even as we celebrate a remarkable individual, the evolution debate continues as fiercely as ever. Yet this seminal work, far and away his most famous and influential book, has overshadowed the other considerable scientific achievements of a man who is the father of modern biology and ecology, and godfather to evolutionary genetics. Darwin’s genius impinges directly upon HORTUS readers, as his great body of published work reveals so much of the life history, structure, physiology, reproduction and inheritance of garden plants and wildlife. We think of him at his desk, but Darwin spent much of his time outside in the spacious, well-appointed and much-loved grounds of Down House, which provided botanic garden, laboratory, thinking space and essential element of the contented domestic and intellectual environments that nurtured his genius. There he worked quietly and patiently on the simple but perceptive observations and experiments that would change science and the way we all see the world.
From ‘At Home in Charles Darwin’s Garden’ by John Akeroyd
The Lewes Seedy Saturday is one of several seed exchange events that take place throughout the country. The very first UK seed swap, Seedy Sunday, took place only a few miles away in Brighton in 2002, and this event continues to thrive. There are also numerous internet sites devoted to the cause – but what exactly is ‘the cause’? Well, over recent years anxiety has grown concerning the control of the supply of seed by the major seed companies, most especially seed of foodstuffs. Commercially available seeds are F1 hybrids, meaning that once a plant has flowered and set seed the seeds cannot be collected, stored and sown, as they are not viable (being either sterile or degenerate), unlike traditional open-pollinated varieties; thus new seeds have to be purchased each growing season. While this may be an expensive irritation for gardeners in the west, it is a real privation for subsistence farmers in developing regions of the world.
From ‘Seedy Saturday’ by Lorraine Harrison
I have a big box of open, partly-emptied seed packets, and I suspect I’m not alone in this. It seems like a terrible waste to throw unused seeds away – seeds aren’t cheap, for one thing, and who wants to be wasteful these straitened days? Besides, I’ve frequently planted seeds left over from the year before that germinated perfectly well once they were in the ground. But the seed packets pile up, a few dated as much as three years back. Something will have to be done.
It would be nice to know for certain whether old seed is still good, without having to plant it to find out. Given the extreme heaviness of the soil in my garden and its reluctance to dry out to tillable condition, I can’t afford to spend a few weeks of growing time experimenting with viability (there have been times when I was still waiting impatiently for the earth to crumble as late as the middle of May). As a result, I’ll probably go out and buy yet another batch of fresh seeds –beans, lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini – just to be on the safe side. And end up with still more leftovers that may or may not be any good.
Theoretically, it should be possible to establish with reasonable certainty the likelihood of seed survival. While some touchy species bite the dust (perhaps not the best metaphor) almost as soon as they ripen, others are prepared to hang on for years, decades, even centuries. The other day I ran into a table listing in some detail the life expectancy of a large variety of vegetable and flower seeds ranging from salsify to physostegia, which I would dearly like to trust. Most vegetable seeds, it says, are supposed to be good for three to six years, with only parsnips and okra fading inside one to three. (Cantaloupe seeds, exceptionally, may still sprout after ten years, which recalls the tradition that melon seeds need to age; John Claudius Loudon’s great Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1835) suggested carrying them around in your pocket ‘near the body’ for a couple of months before planting. This was supposed to harden and mature them, though it’s difficult to believe that any living object would be greatly improved by jostling small change and one’s house keys over an extended period of time.) Flower seeds tend to be a good deal shorter-lived; apart from salpiglossis and nasturtiums (would you believe seven years?), they average two to four. Salvia, delphiniums, gerbera and a few others are good for only a year.
From ‘Long Live the Seeds’ by Charles Elliott
On 7 March this year, the Weekend Australian, Rupert Murdoch’s national newspaper, reported that 2009 began with droughts and flooding rains – the writer not even bothering with quotation marks! The newspaper noted that while northern Australia flooded, southern Australia was enduring a heatwave, near-record low rainfall and, in Victoria, unprecedented bushfires. In the first six weeks of the year, twenty-five sites across northern Queensland received more than two metres of rain with a top reading of 2873mm at Bulgun Creek, a small town south of Cairns. Over the same period, most of Victoria had less than 24mm, with Melbourne receiving less than 5mm.
By the end of the first week in January one-third of Queensland was flooded. Record rainfalls broke recordings from 1974; the statewide rainfall for Queensland that month was 229.3mm, almost twice the long-term average of 127.7mm.
At the other end of the country, in South Australia, western and central Victoria and south-western New South Wales, other records were under threat. Many significant towns and cities received no rain; Melbourne got just 0.8mm of rain, its second lowest on record, in January. The city endured a thirty-five-day spell with no rain.
The first weeks of February brought no improvement. But it was the heatwaves of late January and early February that really stressed us southerners and set new records. The heatwave climaxed on what has now become known as Black Saturday, 7 February, when much of the state experienced its hottest day on record. In Melbourne, the temperature reached a record 46.4 degrees Celsius. The previous record was 45.6 on 13 January 1939, a day known as Black Friday.
A decade of drought, coupled with severe water restrictions in capital cities and country towns, a heatwave like no other has tested the determination and dedication of every gardener. We are on severe water rationing with an allowance of four hours of hand-watering per week; in my case, Wednesday and Sunday, from 6 till 8 a.m.
We had been lulled into thinking we might be headed for a mild summer; at Christmas my garden looked green and positively lush after one good fall of rain in early December. But in January Melbourne experienced days in the forties, a day of 45 degrees on 30 January and followed a week later by the 46.4 Celsius.
So what happens to your garden when the average temperature in January is supposed to be 28 degrees and it climbs to 46.4 with 4 per cent humidity?...
From ‘Gardening in the Dragon’s Breath: Australia and its Recent Forest Fires’ by Christine Reid
I was plodding along, as gardeners do, when news about Russia came to me from Holland via Lithuania: I was told that in Siberia there were whole square miles of Erythronium sibiricum. This made me ring a friend who was able to give me a Moscow phone number to which I confided my desire to go Siberia, with the result that contact was established between me and Novosibirsk Botanic Garden. My first and most useful contact there was Helen, whose English was excellent and whose knowledge of the way things worked invaluable.
After three weeks I received an official invitation to accompany the Novosibirsk Botanic Garden team on a field trip to the East Altai Mountains. The date for starting was 19 May 2000, by which time it was reckoned that snow at lower levels should have melted. I welcomed the opportunity to learn at first hand about an erythronium of which I had no practical knowledge.
I had only to get to Moscow and change from the international to the national airport and find the place to queue. I believe the plane to Novosibirsk went through six time zones in ten hours, but maybe I misunderstood the Russian announcements. The only advice I had been given was to eat the fish, not the chicken. I did, and it was excellent.
It was first light when we landed at Novosibirsk, with pink clouds in the sky and sweet fresh air. Helen and her husband were there to meet me and we drove off through the flat landscape. The memory that remains with me is of the large numbers of abandoned projects and unfinished buildings along the roadside, where work appeared to have abruptly stopped. When I asked about this I was told ‘they ran out of money’. I realised then that they had been through a period of high inflation, which probably explained why there had been such a delay over telling me what I should pay for coming on this trip. In the end it was £400, which I took in traveller’s cheques and gave to Helen.
From ‘Hunting the Dog’s Tooth: Erythroniums in the Garden and in the Wild’ by Joan Loraine
Madrid is favoured with more green spaces than any other European city. There are fifty-seven named parks and hundreds of floriferous garden squares and tree-lined avenues. Some of the parks, like Buen Retiro and Campo de Moro, are well known but it is worth also seeking out the exquisite Parque Almeda de Osuna, otherwise known as El Capricho (or The Folly), in the north-east of the city, near Barajas.
It was created in the eighteenth century by Maria Josefa de Pimentel, the Duchess of Osuna, an intelligent and influential woman from a family so wealthy that it was said you could walk all over Spain without stepping off its land. The Duchess acquired one thousand hectares of land piecemeal and constructed a garden which was effectively an extension of her salon. She was a patron of Goya, who painted her, and a friend of poets and theatre people, some of whom had a hand in the making of this, the most romantic of gardens.
Now the city has encroached and only some forty-three acres (17.5 hectares) of garden remain. It was acquired by the city in 1934 and has undergone a very sympathetic and thoroughly documented restoration begun in 1986 which continues to this day.
If you entered by the front gate of the Palacio in the Duchess's day you were probably a spy or a political enemy – all friends entered by the back, as visitors still do today. The first thing you see is a miniature bull ring, used, as was the rest of the garden, for the entertainment of guests. From here an avenue of tall clipped cypresses brings you to a classical exedra surrounded by sphinxes and a semi-circle of classical busts – which are genuine antiquities and were transported here on seventy donkeys from the family's property in Valencia. As you proceed towards the palace, if you look down to your right you can see the lower garden, which was at one time orchards and today still contains shady walks and a large maze of clipped laurel.
From ‘The Duchess’s Folly: El Capricho, Madrid’ by Patricia Cleveland-Peck
‘John Brookes: Fifty Years of Garden and Landscape Design in London’ was the title of a lecture given at the Garden Museum in London earlier this year by garden and landscape historian Barbara Simms for which I had signed up because I was hoping to learn something of the life of the man behind the work and because, in truth, I had failed to notice the obvious limitations that title would impose on her. Simms is also an academic and she stuck so unwaveringly to her brief that most of the past thirty years of her subject’s multi-faceted career, never mind its hinterland, had to be summed up in a tantalising sentence or two. For example, my notes – and they are not far off verbatim – read: ‘After an eighteen-month stay in Iran, returns to London in late 1979 without clients or a teaching post’, followed by ‘1980: sets up design school and practice at Denmans, West Sussex’ and, finally, ‘twenty-first century: busy creating gardens around the world, but hardly any in London.’
So I wrote to John Brookes, MBE to ask if he would fill in the gaps in his story for me himself. I had in any case wanted to meet the celebrated designer ever since hearing him some years ago deliver the opening address at an all-day seminar on the subject of garden design, and in the process lead his audience on such a scintillating dash through its various stages of evolution in Britain in the last century that his allotted hour had felt like half, and the next speaker’s like two by comparison. ‘I have’, he emailed in reply, ‘done quite long teaching stints in Australia, South Africa, Chile, US and I now have a school in Buenos Aires – La Pampa Infinita it is called! It’s all to do with trying to establish a cultural identity. I love the research.’ That last observation would explain why a man now in his mid seventies who could afford – according to a well-informed friend - to spend his life on cruise ships, prefers to spend it flying around the world on work projects.
From ‘Diana Ross meets John Brookes at his Home in Sussex’
After pausing on the steps of the Flora Pavilion to admire the panorama of the Lower Pond, Dr Kosenko settled us into a capacious boat whose rower manoeuvred expertly among a cheerful throng of gondolas and pedal-boats, past one of the most delightfully bizarre nineteenth-century additions that the Russians made to Sofiyivka. With his deft manipulation of water pressure, Metzel had created a fountain in the centre of the Lower Pond with a plume of water shooting up from a rough-hewn boulder. To this the Russians have added an astonishing bronze sculpture of a massive serpent coiled upon the rock, head thrown back and water shooting up from its open jaws. It is a stunning sight, an apparition worthy of the Nibelungenlied.
The second Stakenschneider Pavilion is also approached by water, across the Upper Pond to the Potockis’ Island of Anti-Circe, given the more conventional name Island of Love by the Russians. Nicholas ordered that an 1843 Gothic building erected under the Military Settlements be removed, and now on the site where Prince Dolgoruky admired the Rousseau monument and Sophie considered entombing either Felix or Trembecki, the Rose Pavilion emerges among the willows, its pure form reflected in the Upper Pond's clear waters as we drifted across on that lovely wooden barge pavilion. Designed on a more intimate scale than the Flora Pavilion, this two-storey octagonal temple presents a graceful portico supported by Ionic columns. Windows in the second-storey lantern light the interior rose stucco walls covered with beautiful white plaster bas-reliefs of acanthus leaves and doves from tiled floor to airy ceiling.
In 1848, a year after Nicholas I’s last visit, officials of the Military Settlements invited Ludwig Metzel to see ‘the final arrangement of the garden’. En route from his home in Warsaw, the aged engineer who had first chose the picturesque site while riding with his uncle Felix more than fifty years before, became fatally ill on the road to Uman, and returned home without seeing his finest creation again. His tomb in Warsaw bears this simple inscription: ‘The creator of Sofiyivka, glorified by Trembecki, lies here.’
From the fourth and concluding part of ‘Eros toi Sofia. Sofiyivka: A Garden of Allusion in Ukraine’ by Sukie Amory
The solstice has come and gone. The sundial’s shadow is a little black pool in the moss under the gnomon. It is hot and green – sweltering hot, and so green that the mind wanders nostalgically back to Hergest and a red Rhododendron ‘Elizabeth’ in front of a cool white-barked Betula jacqmontii ‘Jermyns’, with behind it the clear pink of a big Magnolia campbelli . . .
Someone is sneezing on the far side of the hedge. They are high, cross sneezes, so the sneezer is the Duchess. Her blood is deepest azure, splendidly reactive, so she is allergic to just about everything. The situation is aggravated by the fact that she has declared a state of economic siege, dismissed all garden help, and taken on her own bony shoulders the Hope’s grimmer chores. The dawn chorus segues seamlessly into the howl of her chainsaw. After a light breakfast of anchovies and gin, she careers wildly to and fro on the lawnmower, cursing all trees. This process naturally stirs her allergies to fever pitch, forcing her to spend the afternoon on a daybed in the Turkish kiosk, smashed comatose on Piriton and smoking Capstan Full Strength against the wasps. At dusk she zigzags forth to reminisce.
The other night she gazed upon our flaming embothrium, flared her nostrils to a whiff of wood smoke, and started talking about Lochinch Castle. A friend of hers visited this pile in the time of the last Lord Stair but two, famous as a man who would shoot his own grandmother if he saw her rising from a root field. Returning to the castle one afternoon, the friend became aware of a delicious, incense-like smell. He asked what it was. ‘Embothrium,’ said Stair, waving at the castle’s forest of chimneys. ‘Never burn anything else.’ This seemed to impress even the Duchess. Your embothrium is generally considered a shrubby object of no great height or bulk, and the fireplaces of Lochinch were apparently on a scale that required the service of a full-time stoker. The Gulf Stream coast of Scotland is evidently pretty useful embothrium country. So why were we hanging around in the Welsh Marches?
During the week that followed, we painted the boat. Then we hauled up some sails and went to sea, heading west into a more or less sneeze-free zone.
From ‘A Voyage to the West’ by Sam Llewellyn
Betty Kershaw: A Tribute
Book Reviews
Scotland for Gardeners: The Guide to Scottish Gardens, Nurseries and Garden Centres by Kenneth Cox
Citrus: A History by Pierre Laszlo
The Wall by John Cannell
Woody Cut Stems for Growers and Florists by Lane Greer and John Dole
Ornamental Grasses: Wolfgang Oehme and the New American Garden by Stefan Leppert
A Garden in the Hills by Alan Tait
Inspiring Sussex Gardeners by Lorraine Harrison
Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland by Rae Spencer-Jones and Sarah Cuttle
Sufficient: A Modern Guide to Sustainable Living by Tom Petherick
