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| Extracts From The Current Issue |
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from
The Editor’s Introduction to HORTUS 151
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Despite some chilly days (and a few unseasonal cold nights), the recent summer months propelled new plantings satisfactorily. Young sorbus trees put on two to three feet of fresh growth; various parrotias (‘Vanessa’ and ‘Persian Spire’) as well as the species P. persica romped ahead; diminutive cotinus plants reached waist height and a group of five slow-to-get-going Cercidiphyllum japonicum responded well to a June mulch of well-rotted horse manure and helpful irrigation. The gold medal Olympians were, however, the paulownias – P. tomentosa. I planted a baker’s dozen of six-inch seedlings just twelve months ago; several, by this September, had attained a height of seven feet with thick stems that already appear woody and durable. I wonder if/when they’ll bloom. But grown principally for their foliage to give our massed hydrangea plantings some quick shade, any flowers – though early and outstandingly beautiful – are of secondary importance.
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from
‘Tradescant’s Diary’
by
Hugh Johnson
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23 July 2024: We landed in Normandy on D-day, eighty years after the event, to find jeeps clogging the roads, a sea of ancient khaki uniforms and veteran Dakotas roaring over the surf. But it was another British connection that brought us; we came to revisit the most beautiful English garden in France. How many people know that one of the best of the famous collaborations between Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens is on the other side of the Channel? Literally ‘on’. The thirty acres of Le Bois des Moutiers tumble dramatically down to a cliff edge and the sea. The garden, and one of Lutyens’ most successful country houses, was commissioned by the Mallet family of bankers at the end of the nineteenth century. If you book a visit, there is still a member of the family to show you round, though today it belongs to the Seydoux family, owners of most of France’s cinemas. In one hundred and thirty-odd years it has matured into something that would give its planters justified joy.
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from
‘Our Garden Birds: The Coal Tit’
by
Adam Ford
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Familiar visitors to our gardens are the tits of the Paridae family, two of the most common being the small blue tit, acrobatically exploring the peanuts in the bird feeder, or the brassy great tit, black, white and yellow, flying in boldly to take seeds from the food tray. We may sometimes be blessed in winter with a flock of beautiful long-tailed tits, but technically they are not tits at all but members of a totally different family, the Aegithalidae.
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from
‘Gardening on the Edge:
New Plantings on St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall’
by
Kirsty Fergusson
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By some strange magic, the island and its castle appeared to float above the sea, thanks to the mist that had enveloped the harbour of Marazion on the mainland, hiding the causeway that the tide timetable announced to be accessible again within the hour. But that was back in the warm summer of 2012, when I first visited the Mount, in the company of Michael Harvey, a plantsman and garden designer from Boston, Massachusetts, who was advising on the new planting schemes that would bring greater legibility to the terraced borders when viewed from high above – that is to say from the windows and jutting balconies of the the castle, towering overhead. Today, however, the sea is excited and grey, dashing the stones of the causeway with cold spray and the wind is gathering strength: it’s 6 April and storm Kathleen is approaching. Darren Little, the head gardener, tells me there’ll be no boat in this weather, but to come on foot at 9 a.m. – and although at 8.45 when I hover uncertainly on Marazion beach, watching the retreating waves and a raven enjoying a breakfast of crushed limpets on the causeway and feeling sure of a soaking ahead, at 9 o’clock I pass miraculously dry-footed onto the island. Islanders (and Darren was born and raised on the island) know these things.
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from
‘The Size of Wales Garden:
From Chelsea to the Treborth Botanic Garden’
by
Paula Deitz
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During its long history, beginning in 1913, the Chelsea Flower Show has grown from a single marquee into a widespread extravaganza of both horticultural and design expertise. Over time, acres of booths displaying rare plants under cover were complemented by individual show gardens along the grand avenues, with usually corporate sponsorship. These gardens, a triumph of landscape design, seduce the public every May by their combination of fantasy and reality (if only one could live in such a place). At the show’s end, the plantspeople returned to their nurseries, with new devotees, and the show gardens were mostly destroyed, with a few exceptions: some designers took them home, while a small number were spoken for elsewhere. The most famous of these was the 2001 Islamic Carpet Garden inspired by then Prince Charles that was transported to his garden at Highgrove.
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from
‘The Man Who Grew Too Much: H. V. Machin’
by
Martin Stott
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Standing in his garden at Normanton Hall in Nottinghamshire, retired Crown Court judge John Vessey Machin looks on proudly at a bed of deep raspberry Hybrid Tea roses. This is the now-rare ‘H. V. Machin’ released in 1912 by Irish breeder Alex Dickson and named after John’s grandfather. Henry Vessey Machin may go down in history as the world’s most prodigious amateur rose grower. He grew as many as fifty-five thousand on his estate, purely for competing at exhibitions. This is the story of an obsession – one that gripped many in Victorian Britain, spread across the world, and shaped our gardens for many decades. Its echoes linger today. The story starts about the time of Machin’s birth not far from where we are standing.
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from
‘La Foce:
The Garden as a Work of Art’
by
Patricia Cleveland-Peck
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I have been fortunate enough to visit many gardens, some very grand, some elegantly designed, some filled with rare and exquisite plants and some thought-provoking, but few have given me the sense of having actually stepped into a work of art; La Foce is one which did. Its Tuscan landscape, its design and the personae of its creators have come together to form something completely harmonious which, because a garden is a living thing, provides the visitor with a unique aesthetic experience. On a fine April day, standing beneath the arbour which winds its way across much of the top of the garden, with the scent of wisteria and the sound of birdsong in the air, I see far below me a cool and verdant lawn edged with dark columnar cypresses within which are eight box-edged enclosures clipped at varying heights to unusual shapes. All is restful, green on green, other than a stone basin and, at the end to the left, an elaborate stone bench surmounted by an antique statue which I learn is one of the Allegories of the Seasons by Orazio Marinali.
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from
‘On and Off Stage:
Some New and Developing Ornamental Trees’
by
Bob Askew
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Acer buergerianum: a beautiful species, trident maple has long been cultivated in Japan, especially as a subject for bonsai. It came into cultivation in the West as early as 1890, despite which it remains nowhere near common. American nurseries are, however, beginning to make selections, such as Acer buergerianum Aeryn (‘ABMTF’) and A. b. Valynor (‘ABFSS’), having discovered its heat and cold tolerance and good branch integrity under wind, ice, and snow-load. In the more benign UK climate, we can simply enjoy the very pretty leaves, the beautiful emergent and autumn foliage colours, and – with age – the flaky orange and grey bark. Unlike some maples, in my experience it is not significantly susceptible to powdery mildew, and attains its modest mature size slowly enough to make it a great choice for medium-sized gardens and pedestrian areas in our cityscapes. Fed up of waiting for the American selections to make the journey ‘over the pond’, I have begun my own search for worthy candidates – my first, with a working title of ‘Burgundy Babe’, is being planted out this winter. This will enable proper assessments of the emergent foliage colour – for which it has been selected and provisionally named – as well as its autumn colour, habit, and disease resistance. If it succeeds in these regards, it will hopefully be introduced commercially.
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from
‘Clematis Myths:
Where Do They Come From and Will They Ever Disappear’
by
Bethan Charles
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How do gardening misconceptions turn into myths? Is it that one trusted and influential source comes to a view about one type of plant and either, erroneously applies it across the whole of its wider grouping, or the author’s audience misconstrues the advice as applying more widely? The idea may ripple across his contemporaries and down through the generations. When we first start to garden, we learn from general sources, but as our interest develops our experience increases and our knowledge grows; thoughtful gardeners start to question, to learn from their own evidence and to look to specialist sources for knowledge, which often debunks all previous advice. Circumstances can also change, so that advice which was previously applicable becomes outdated. Being open-minded is essential to have the ability to rethink. A scientific mind always knows there is room for doubt and that no one has a monopoly on truth. It is a passion for learning about clematis and interacting with other British Clematis Society members that led me into thinking about these myths and, until I started writing them down, I hadn’t appreciated how many I believe exist.
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from
‘The Patch on the Hill: With a View to Perpetuity’
by
Judy Kravis
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You can fetch up on a hill in Ireland, by chance it seems when you look back on it. You can make sketches on envelopes at the kitchen table, and slowly transform agricultural land into paradise. That was their word, not ours. Oasis was another word. Was this your dream, did you have a plan, how did you do it? People ask when they visit. ‘By staying here, by not having a plan,’ we reply. By walking around most days, pausing, sitting, lying down, inhabiting the long grass, insects intent up and around the grass stem, the brain stem, by working hard for many years. There was no plan and then there were several plans, several purchases of further fields in which we planted trees, made a pond, and tended what we’d made.
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from
‘Indian Gardens:
An Oxford Student Reflects on the Gardens of Home’
by
Soham Kacker
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In a seminal 1989 essay, Indian poet, linguist and folklorist A. K. Ramanujan asked the question, ‘Is there an Indian way of thinking?’. Having recently left the Subcontinent for England, and taken a literal step away to look back upon my country and culture, I have found myself asking a similar question. But being a plantsman, not a philosopher, I ask ‘Is there an Indian way of gardening?’. This reflection is stoked by my distinctly different perceptions of gardens and green spaces in the UK, which seem to me to have a different character, a different ‘essence’. The question is complicated for a variety of reasons, greatest among which is that the terms ‘Indian’ and ‘garden’ both encompass such a wide array of meanings in the collective imagination of the Subcontinent. Hence to speak of an ‘Indian Garden’ is to reconcile in one phrase that which is at once mythical and factual; wild and cultivated; socially minded yet beyond the bounds of society; private and public; and meant for pleasure and penance. As I look back, I walk through some of these . . .
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from
‘My Autumn Garden’
by
Edward Flint
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Heralded on a warm phlox-scented morning by the clear bright chime of a robin and a saluted adieu at the day’s end by a stream of ragged rooks cawing as they soar and wheel into roost, returning from a day gleaning on harvest stubbles, always from the west as if dragging the setting sun in their wake, autumn creeps into the garden, as much if not more, a state of mind as a season. Autumn marks the start of the gardening year, a time of optimism and hope as thoughts turn to the future, not the melancholy, elegiac beginning of the end that the very word ‘autumn’ has come to symbolise.
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from
‘Invasive? Moi?’
by
Ben Probert
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I remember the first time I met Lysimachia clethroides. I was absolutely captivated by how the sun shone against the slender goose-neck flowerheads, making the pure white flowers glow. I’ve since become a fan of lysimachias, yet grow very few of them myself. Lysimachias are typically spreading in habit but there are far worse things you can grow. Many gardeners regard them as ‘invasive’. The word is an interesting one in a gardening context, bringing to mind an enemy that must be battled rather than just a strongly growing garden plant. In ecology, an invasive species is so often an enemy, outcompeting native flora, but defining what constitutes an invasive plant in our borders is a bit harder.
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from
‘On Standing and Staring in the Garden’
by
Rod Madocks
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I can’t wait for the dawns. The time to draw back the curtains to reveal the garden as a cockpit of colour. Even better, to go out into it, doing nothing in particular – just looking deeply at autumn’s spectacle. There are so many tasks in this fulcrum of the year: leaf raking, soil preparation, planting bulbs; the urgent alliums are popping their sprue-like white roots; they are calling out to be put in the ground, yet I always have time to simply stand and stare and take in the shape and colour of the garden beneath the rain-pregnant clouds. Tomorrow it will be different and again changing in a week. The eye holds it all for an indrawn moment.
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from
‘From the Home Patch’
by
Tom Petherick
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Autumn is a key time of year for biodynamic gardeners. For it is in autumn that we and the farmers come together, usually in local groups, to make what are known as the biodynamic preparations. These are the measures which we spray on soil and plant to enhance the forces of life that are held in both and in turn passed on to us for our nourishment. The reason that autumn, around the time of its equinox (22 September this year, one week before the Feast of Michaelmas, the end of harvest) is of such strategic importance is that certain preparations, notably horn manure (BD500) needs to spend the six months between autumn and spring equinox buried in the soil. This is in order to give the manure that has been stuffed into the horn the best chance to ferment properly, because it is during this period that the moon is descending and her downward gravitational pull is strongest. This fertile time allows the bacteria in the horn to work at an efficient rate, just as in a compost heap.
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from
‘Digging With the Duchess:
The Heart of the Labyrinth’
by
Sam Llewellyn
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‘Never,’ said the Duchess, ‘again.’ You could see her point. We were on a cheap flight, and it was full, and there had been cancellations. The plane took off, and us with it, and the people in front drank their duty free, much to the Duchess’s disgust, for they failed to offer her so much as a swig. The captain broke up the fights just before we landed, and we proceeded towards the mountains that reared on the northern horizon. For we had decided, gentle reader, or at least the Duchess had, that the climate of Britain was not suitable for human beings or indeed, judging by the evidence of the garden at the Hope, plants; so we were on Mallorca
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The Accidental Garden:
Gardens, Wilderness and the Space in Between
by Richard Mabey
reviewed by John Akeroyd
Chrysanthemums:
Beautiful Varieties for Home and Garden
by Naomi Slade
reviewed by Malcolm Allison
Behind The Privet Hedge: Richard Sudell,
The Suburban Garden and the Beautification of Britain
by Michael Gilson
reviewed by Peter Dale
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The winter issue of HORTUS (No. 152, Winter, 2024)
will be published in December
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