|
 |
| Extracts From The Current Issue |
|
|
from
The Editor’s introduction to
HORTUS 154, Summer 2025
|
|
|
‘Dear All,’ begins an upbeat email from John Grimshaw, ‘It gives me immense pleasure to be able to tell you that we have just published the new IDS Trees and Shrubs Online text for Hydrangea.’ Those ubiquitous seaside mophead hydrangeas are but the tip (a large tip, admittedly) of a genus embracing some sixty-five to a hundred or more species of deciduous or evergreen shrubs (rarely approaching small trees), woody climbers with aerial roots, and herbaceous perennials native to Asia, the Americas, New Guinea and Hawaii, heavily concentrated in warm temperate areas. I was not surprised, therefore, to learn that the new online text occupies a whopping six hundred and sixty-nine individual articles, supported by more than thirteen hundred images.
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘Tradescant’s Diary’
by
Hugh Johnson
|
|
|
29 April 2025: Maybe it’s less than an obsession, but it’s certainly more than an inclination. Blue, that is. It catches my eye. If there’s a patch of blue, that’s where I look, whether it’s the firmament or a periwinkle. Can it have some physical effect on my brain? It does on my emotions. It holds my attention – partly, perhaps, because I’m half-wondering: is that really blue?
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘Our Garden Birds: No. 22: The Nuthatch’
by
Adam Ford
|
|
|
I continue to be surprised at how small the European nuthatch is, no bigger than a great tit. There is something about its character – the noisy way it announces its presence, its sleek shape and bold bandit-like black eye-mask – that makes me think of it as a larger bird, until I actually see it. Maybe it is the large head, squat body and short tail that creates, in memory, my wrong impression. There are half a dozen varieties of nuthatch in Europe, including the rock nuthatch and the Corsican nuthatch; worldwide the family contains more than two dozen species.
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘Growing with Irises’
by Malcolm Allison
|
|
|
One of the aspects I enjoy most of being a self-employed nursery-man is that I can indulge my interest in particular groups of plants as I wish, while always being mindful of the fact that I grow plants with a view to selling them. This can be more of an issue with groups such as tender and subtropical Amaryllids than for irises, which not only tend to combine beautiful flowers in a wide range of colours while being largely hardy, but are very easy to grow and with species and cultivars suited for almost any garden situation. One of the aspects I enjoy most of being a self-employed nursery-man is that I can indulge my interest in particular groups of plants as I wish, while always being mindful of the fact that I grow plants with a view to selling them. This can be more of an issue with groups such as tender and subtropical Amaryllids than for irises, which not only tend to combine beautiful flowers in a wide range of colours while being largely hardy, but are very easy to grow and with species and cultivars suited for almost any garden situation.
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘Created for the Community; Managed by the Community’
(The Cowbridge Physic Garden)
by Jo Homfray
|
|
|
It is rare indeed in today’s troubled world to come across a newly created garden in the centre of an old market town. Frequently referred to as ‘the jewel in the heart of the Vale of Glamorgan’, the Physic Garden sits quietly in the centre of Cowbridge. It is maintained by volunteers who have horticultural knowledge and is open and free for all to enjoy.
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘A Garden for All Centuries:
The Bishop’s Palace Garden, Hereford, 1188–2025’
by Tom Oliver
|
|
|
I have had the great good fortune to play a part in the researching, the restoration and the partial re-design of the ancient garden of the bishops of Hereford, which has been playing the same role for more than eight centuries. There are few English gardens which have written evidence of both their existence and their use which dates back almost eight hundred and fifty years – but such is the case with the Bishop’s Palace garden in Hereford. The diplomat, priest and historian Giraldus Cambrensis recorded the visit by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1188 to the bishop’s palace at Hereford for a meeting with key regional politicians and their entertainment, in the brand new bishop’s hall and, explicitly, in the adjoining bishop’s garden.
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘Plants and Architecture’
by Lorraine Harrison
|
|
|
There is little doubt that plants soften, settle and help establish a building within its environment like nothing else quite does. One just needs to compare the stark, uncompromising presence of a newly constructed house with one that sits within an established garden of trees, climbers and shrubs, to see the sympathetic synergy of plants and architecture. Of course, this is of particular interest to domestic gardeners whose plots invariably sit alongside their homes and who have, over time, found that some plants associate particularly well with the built environment. This may have led to some much-used, or even possibly over-used, planting combinations over time, but this is simply because they work.
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘All in the Family:
Five Generations of the Brandywine du Ponts’
by Marta McDowell
|
|
|
Not far from Philadelphia and overlapping with part of metropolitan Wilmington, lies an inviting corner of the mid-Atlantic Piedmont, a locus of American horticulture past and present. Within a ten-mile radius, five generations of du Ponts created a legacy in the form of what are now public gardens: Winterthur, Longwood, Nemours, Mt Cuba, and Hagley where the story took root. On 1 January 1800, the scion of this family tree arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, escaping from the political and economic turmoil of post-revolutionary France. Twenty-eight-year-old E?leuthe?re Ire?ne?e du Pont – whom we shall refer to as E. I. – listed his profession as Botaniste on the passport issued by the French Republic in 1799.
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘Aphids, Ants and Nettles: Who Needs Them?’
by Jane Powers
|
|
|
Aphids have begun their joyous midsummer explosion, clustering on tender stems, hunkering down in flower-petal sanctuaries and drowning in our drinks. They may be eating your and my plants, but these tiny green monsters are essential to the garden’s well-being. If there were no aphids, life in the garden would sputter to a stop, or at least become slow and unreliable. So, while they might look like the enemy to us, in reality, these soft-bodied sap-suckers are one of the principal fuels feeding the garden’s fauna, either directly or indirectly.
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘Mrs Earle’s Pot-Pourris’
by Peter Parker
|
|
|
Among the popular garden writers of the Victorian and Edwardian era, Mrs C. W. Earle (1836–1925) is perhaps the least well remembered. A follower of William Robinson and a contemporary and friend of Gertrude Jekyll, Theresa Earle wrote a series of books, beginning in 1897 with Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, which were best-sellers in their time. This first volume went through ten editions in two years, and my own copy, published in 1900, is the twentieth edition. The book’s success led people to ask for more of the same, and so a second volume, More Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, appeared in 1899, followed by A Third Pot-Pourri in 1903 and Pot-Pourri Mixed by Two, co-authored with her fellow-gardener Ethel Case, in 1914. Each book is arranged by month, covering a year in the garden but with many digressions on other subjects, such as cooking and health, the rearing of children, the benefits of cremation and the breeding of goats. It is perhaps because she is too easily waylaid by enthusiasms other than horticulture that her renown as a garden writer has rather faded, but the rambling nature of the books is part of their charm. an trees can easily be twice the size, twice the age and twice the height. Their prodigious appearance takes your breath away.
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘Shadows and Half-lights in Gardens’
by Peter Dale
|
|
|
One of the most enjoyable things so far this year in the garden – something suggestive of a magic at work – was spotting a singularly lovely hellebore. Old parchment, creamy-white-green petals freckled with specks of maroon. I expect you will have seen something similar in your own garden. That being so, I am not going to make any special claim for this. But that’s not quite the end of the story. In a low but strong spring light, this bloom was intensely back-lit. Those milky-cream petals were translucent . . .
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘From the Home Patch’
by Tom Petherick
|
|
|
This has been as tough a ‘hungry gap’ as I can remember. Months of wet followed by cold, drying east winds led to early spring crops shrivelling in the cold weather in garden, greenhouse and poly tunnel. When the sun did come out and spring took off in earnest, the purple sprouting broccoli went over quickly and the stage was set for asparagus. What a year it was for this plant that is entirely untroubled by the turmoil going on above ground while simply marking time in the belly of the soil before bursting forth for the spring and early summer.
|
|
|
|
|
from
‘Digging with the Duchess: Water Feature’
by Sam Llewellyn
|
|
|
I am standing in the Big Pond at the Hope, dryly but not stylishly dressed in salmon-fishing waders. There is a rake in my hand, but I am not raking. Instead I am watching the surface stretch away smooth as deep-green glass in all directions, admiring the extra-ordinary symmetry and waterproofness of a lily flower and the manoeuvres of ephemerids rising to meet their doom in the pillar of swallows that whirls into the empyrean.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Forbidden Garden Of Leningrad:
A True Story of Science and Sacrifice in a City Under Siege
by Simon Parkin
reviewed by Brent Elliott
*
The Art of Fine Gardening:
Craig Bergmann Landscape Design
by Craig Bergmann
and
Gardening with Nature at the New York Botanical Garden
by Todd Forrest and Larry Lederman
reviewed by Judith B. Tankard
|
|
|
|
|
HORTUS 155, Autumn 2025
will be published in September
|
|
|
