tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52232946030027827622024-03-18T02:47:31.674-07:00Noel's Garden BlogVarious ramblings and musings on gardening, agriculture, food and related subjects. Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.comBlogger270125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-70602888842816436992020-01-25T13:07:00.003-08:002020-01-25T13:07:15.500-08:00This blog has moved !<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is my old blog, which I will keep as an archive. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I am now blogging entirely from my website:</span></div>
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<a href="https://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog"><span style="font-size: large;">https://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog</span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">See you there!</span></div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-46715792976566788572019-08-11T05:44:00.003-07:002019-08-11T05:44:57.664-07:00Dutch garden and landscape travels<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Well here we are. Another slightly lonely night in the camper van. I'm trundling around The Netherlands researching a possible book on contemporary Dutch garden design. It was an idea the leading Dutch garden photographer Maayke de Ridder and I thought up some time ago. We think we have a publisher now but it is all still a bit speculative. Anyway a great way of meeting people and learning more about a dynamic gardening and design culture. </div>
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Read on here: <a href="http://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog" target="_blank">www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog</a></div>
Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-60263163867029878192019-06-23T04:18:00.000-07:002019-06-23T04:18:03.597-07:00Mind the Gap!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<strong>Why is so much perennial planting so gappy?</strong></div>
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Why do so many gardens, private and public, which are supposed to be about growing plants, look like displays of soil or exhibitions of mulch?</div>
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Here, I'd like to address the whole issue of planting density, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" target="_blank">with some observations based on the results of a seven year trial</a> which has just been published in <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" target="_blank">The Plantsman</a> journal.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog" target="_blank">Read on here........ </a></span></div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-91408814654907875812019-03-31T10:06:00.004-07:002019-03-31T10:06:53.248-07:00Why is Britain in such a mess? Part Two<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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If
you are watching, horrified, at the continuing political chaos in
Britain you may like to read Part Two of my occasional political posting
'Why is Britain in such a mess?' It's an attempt to explain to
outsiders, especially the often anglophile garden community, what is
going on. Brits might like to take a look too. It's not meant to
re-assuring!<br /> <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" data-lynx-uri="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.noelkingsbury.com%2Fnoelsgarden-blog%2F2019%2F3%2F31%2Fwhy-is-britain-in-such-a-mess-part-two%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR0IKKZEszNMrM9JHuFpDekwrwdp8mFsTeY85C3afGM2okThshJDxrt1aNQ&h=AT3MRwgEVoNzZS4rfma_SSxsdWKYq2167KIRPUzin1jyUzxs356TOyiUWb0n8sAGr0AOqzvQS3PBsSym44l_d_pulNMIJK52hVZ0_SSAc_dbbp5Yw-gO12vDCIrdgBgKCUKu09XR6fdQCJIcObP26jVHbiIF8KLX3Alc" href="https://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog/2019/3/31/why-is-britain-in-such-a-mess-part-two?fbclid=IwAR0IKKZEszNMrM9JHuFpDekwrwdp8mFsTeY85C3afGM2okThshJDxrt1aNQ" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog/2019/3/31/why-is-britain-in-such-a-mess-part-two</a></div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-77694785379689882422019-03-05T00:19:00.002-08:002019-03-05T00:19:59.101-08:00Horti-Culture in Camellia-City Porto<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Porto in northern Portugal is the city of the camellia. The public parks
and people’s gardens are full of them. For those of us who are only
used to seeing them as head high, or maybe in Cornwall, up to the first
storey, these are huge. And the city clearly loves them. Last weekend,
the city council put on its annual camellia festival.<br />
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<a href="https://noel-kingsbury.squarespace.com/noelsgarden-blog/2019/3/3/horti-culture-in-the-porto-the-city-of-camellias?p?p?p" target="_blank">Read on here----- </a></div>
Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-4350656944007462862019-02-10T03:19:00.002-08:002019-02-10T03:19:38.859-08:00Secrets to using grasses<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Grasses simply are the best thing in the garden right now. At the most dismal time of year, when there is almost nothing else to take our minds off grey skies and cold winds, grasses can not just make an impact but actually look really good. <a href="https://www.learningwithexperts.com/gardening/blog/secrets-to-using-grasses-beautifully-in-the-garden" target="_blank">Read on here.......</a><br />
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This is the first of a new secondary blog posting I am now doing for <a href="https://www.learningwithexperts.com/gardening/blog" target="_blank">Learning with Experts</a>
- this is more practically-orientated and entry-level than my main blog, but always with
little bit of detail on plant and garden history, ecology etc.<br />
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Here is the <a href="https://www.learningwithexperts.com/gardening/blog/" target="_blank">link to blogs from the Learning with Experts group.</a><br />
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Picture credit: Jason Ingram<br />
Jason is one of our leading garden photographers. You can come and learn the tricks of the trade from him through our <a href="https://www.gardenmasterclass.org/" target="_blank">Garden Masterclass programme. </a><br />
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-68218495260947999812019-01-26T01:42:00.000-08:002019-01-26T01:42:00.076-08:00Olivier Filippi and the Mediterranean garden of the future<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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An overview of the garden created by Olivier and Carla Filippi over the
last thirty years. To many of us it appears to be a quintessentially
Mediterranean landscape, all those grey hummocks and of course the
Italian cypresses. The visual balance between these two elements is
powerful as well as symbolising a harmony between the natural and the
cultural. The cypresses may be native to the region but the narrow form
is the result of a long period of selection and the tree’s wide range is
a reflection of centuries of planting.<br />
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<a href="https://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog/2019/1/11/olivier-filippi-and-the-mediterranean-garden-of-the-future" target="_blank">Carry on reading here:</a><br />
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-31101875033042373602018-11-10T02:31:00.001-08:002018-11-10T02:31:10.589-08:00Portugal Centro Region - the front line of climate change?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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You want to know what impact climate change will have on landscapes? Come to the Centro Region of Portugal and take a look.</div>
Having spent some months in the region, I really feel on the front line of climate change. I have blogged before about the devastating fires the area has suffered from..... <a href="https://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog/2018/11/10/portugal-centro-region-the-front-line-of-climate-change" target="_blank">to read on see here.</a><br /><br />
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-40679334213685693652018-10-14T10:48:00.000-07:002018-10-14T10:48:45.266-07:00Louisiana, Denmark - a perfect synthesis of sculpture, archictecture and landscape<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Louisiana, a contemporary art gallery north of Copenhagen just has to be one of my most favourite places. Not for the contents so much (I am no great fan of contemporary art) but for the extraordinary and quite unique synthesis of art, landscape and architecture it offers. It also has an atmosphere of immense calm, almost a healing atmosphere. I think I have been there six or seven times now and every time I walk away quite mesmerised by it..... <a href="https://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog/2018/10/13/louisiana-denmark-a-perfect-synthesis-of-sculpture-archictecture-and-landscape" target="_blank">continue here</a></div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-85246531446747330742018-10-11T13:31:00.001-07:002018-10-11T13:31:47.181-07:00End of an era at Hummelo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So, you have until October 27th to see Piet and Anja’s private garden at Hummelo. After that, sorry, but its no more visiting..... continue on <a data-ft="{"tn":"-U"}" data-lynx-mode="asynclazy" data-lynx-uri="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.noelkingsbury.com%2Fnoelsgarden-blog%2F&h=AT2sfnoum2FPwftv20a6BmIdhNT4j2K0jJeMIrjddcN_K28x8_ybWLlwWXwjBMEvEoH9bnMydAfSnHcNGYSjMDdm-2_XHODiDEYlemMSfYAwVqM-40rm6b-OoJZt-8ek5GTnGzOvcdhZCXirpBzUskEd" href="https://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.noelkingsbury.com/noelsgarden-blog/</a><br />
where I will now be moving my blog posts from now on. This felt like a good opportunity to make the move, as the old blogger site just did not do justice to the images. </div>
Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-18340736113621120642018-08-19T00:25:00.000-07:002018-08-19T00:47:58.455-07:00Ecological Planting - The revolution will never be bought at the garden centre.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9bwMjgFjYMCswC_J_nZFcNw8V4vDtfRi7QMpuPFQ29uGfDObUJqRuCt3D4EmMnPX0qdxLiaLKcQoA6ASTNkel9_o32Btged2MGQYBIRhyukdUHfGkbeXexCoeowmHl92h5oRIAosl3A7Z/s1600/_38A3076.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9bwMjgFjYMCswC_J_nZFcNw8V4vDtfRi7QMpuPFQ29uGfDObUJqRuCt3D4EmMnPX0qdxLiaLKcQoA6ASTNkel9_o32Btged2MGQYBIRhyukdUHfGkbeXexCoeowmHl92h5oRIAosl3A7Z/s400/_38A3076.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Larry Weaner garden in New England. To be featured in the October issue of Gardens Illustrated. Photo credit: Claire Takacs</td></tr>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Who remembers that
wonderful Gil Scott-Heron rap song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnJFhuOWgXg" target="_blank">“The Revolution Will Not BeTelevised”</a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
The
revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
The
revolution will not get rid of the nubs</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
The
revolution will not make you look five pounds</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
Thinner,
because The revolution will not be televised.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 1.25cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I feel like coming up
with something similar for 'ecological planting'.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is much talk of
ecological planting? Is anyone actually doing any? Or is it all talk?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What is ecological
planting anyway?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And does it matter?
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Well, it is always
nice when words convey meaning we can all agree on, and in this case
we are not just talking about something with the equivalence of an
artistic movement but also something that a direct impact on
biodiversity. There is always the ever-present danger of 'greenwash',
something sounding green and good for the environment but in fact
just a trendy feel-good facade.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Years ago (late 1990s)
Nigel Dunnett and James Hitchmough had made the distinction between
'naturalistic' planting and ecological functioning, i.e. you can have
1) something that looks natural but is either completely static or
dependent on quite intense management or 2) a planting that is to
some extent dynamic, i.e. its components are going through active
processes of seeding, spreading, dying. An ecologically functioning
planting should have some level of stability, so it can continue to
exist without too much human intervention. One example might be a
meadow, which is dependent for its long-term survival on annual
mowing but otherwise is relatively stable from year to year.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Now, it should be
pretty obvious that there is a lot of good planting design that falls
into the former category, natural looking to most observers but in
fact not in the remotest sense a dynamic self-sustaining plant
community. Anyone with any knowledge of basic plant ecology would not
be fooled, and more importantly neither would most invertebrates
seeking a habitat.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Compare such a
planting to a natural or semi-natural habitat like a meadow and it is
immediately obvious that any horticultural planting is almost
absurdly low density. In a wild habitat, gaps between plants are
often difficult to see, whereas in a human-created planting they are
usually pretty obvious. It is possible to get tens of species in one
square metre in the wild, whereas most artificial plantings have 4 or
5 plants (never mind species) to the square metre, or 9 at the most
(this figure is significant, as we shall see).
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-oGPTjG-jEkWAksVCla7rFetysF26ruBjqH-ZIhxcrVClY7ct_i5O3tHpjbQfPux8mYPOyCeynwl9rzqqsg-U7RZtasCe4dm5i1FIj4BKD-_bi_KXn_FHdMvs5H0oGw3pNqHSwvi872fF/s1600/E.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1064" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-oGPTjG-jEkWAksVCla7rFetysF26ruBjqH-ZIhxcrVClY7ct_i5O3tHpjbQfPux8mYPOyCeynwl9rzqqsg-U7RZtasCe4dm5i1FIj4BKD-_bi_KXn_FHdMvs5H0oGw3pNqHSwvi872fF/s400/E.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Six species in shot, but could do better, BUT much greater species density than most gardeners aim at: close-up of one of my old trial plots in Herefordshire</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Think about this
disparity in density in habitat terms – the artificial planting
will be almost inevitably far poorer. So, before doing too much
slapping ourselves on the back about what a good turn we are doing
for nature, let's just consider the absurdity of thinking that just
because we've got something that looks rather natural, and/or is
composed of locally-native species we've created something that is
any way equivalent to a natural habitat. If it's got gaps between
plants its ecological functioning will be below par, and it will be
unstable (space for weeds). Ecological planting it is not.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To go back to Gil
Scott-Heron:</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The revolution is not
because you got the right plants for the habitat conditions,</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The revolution hasn't
happened because you've gone all native
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The revolution isn't
ticking all the species on the list of bee-friendly plants from Home Depot</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The revolution is not
just about looking all wild and woolly,</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The revolution will never be bought at the garden centre.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Above all, because the
whole 'perennial revolution' has happened alongside the interest in
naturalistic planting there tends to develop the thought in too many
heads that “it's all perennials therefore it must be ecological”.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
No!</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
At the same time
however, let's remember the much-quoted <a href="http://www.wlgf.org/Jennifer%20Owens%20studies.pdf" target="_blank">Owen research</a> which
showed just how many insect species an average (i.e. not in the
remotest sense ecological) British garden contains. This shows us the
exciting possibilities! Imagine how much biodiversity a garden could
contain if it had something approaching the density of real habitat
AND the range of diversity that most gardens include anyway (trees
and shrubs and perennials and climbers).</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
How do we measure
garden biodiversity? Not easy. Never is. Owen simply counted species
not their frequency of occurrence in comparison to 'nature', and if
you look through the academic literature it rapidly becomes apparent
that there is no easy, or for that matter difficult, way to measure
overall health of ecological functioning. What sometimes is done by
researchers is to take one particular aspect, usually a category of
insect, and use that as an indicator. Trouble is, it will be
different for different types of habitat. Currently there is much
focus on pollinators. And much trendy nonsense spoken; trouble is -
where there are marketing opportunities, pseudoscientific gibberish
soon follows. Pollinators could a relatively easy group to use as an
indicator for ecosystem health. The trouble is though that I could
imagine a garden planted with pollinator-friendly plants buzzing with
bees etc, but which actually supported very little else such as
ground-level invertebrate biodiversity.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
How much do we want to
create gardens that are genuine biodiversity reserves? If we really
want to create plantings with an ecological functionality that
approaches equivalent natural environments, then we must be honest in
making clear the distinctions between these and plantings that merely
look a bit wild.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Anyone who sows a
meadow or prairie and got it to a point of reasonable stability will
have created a functioning ecosystem. BUT, this won't be a garden but only a habitat restoration. In the
US however, practitioners such as <a href="http://lweanerassociates.com/" target="_blank">Larry Weaner</a> have started to tweak
seed mixes to create what are essentially ornamental versions of
natural ecosystems. The much richer flora of North America (compared
to much of Europe) allows this. But it still is not what most people
would regard as a garden. BTW there's a great example of his work coming up in <a href="https://www.gardensillustrated.com/" target="_blank">Gardens Illustrated</a> soon.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So, any other, more
garden-like, examples?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The best can be seen
in lightly shaded habitats where light levels knock back grass
growth, the main enemy of plant diversity (dense north European
grassland could possibly be worse in ecosystem functioning than your
average garden). Or indeed other, slightly stressed habitats.
Established gardens sometimes have amazingly dense and varied
combinations of woodland species in such places. One of my favourite
such areas is the woodland garden at Wisley (the one near the new
glasshouse): a whole range of rather competitive woodland edge
species, native and introduced fight for supremacy, and with the
possible exception of one patch of comfrey, nobody seems to be
winning. Maintenance seems to be limited to the odd clear-out and
re-plant, which I suspect has the effect of 're-setting the clock'.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A spectacular example
I saw recently was as <a href="http://www.innisfreegarden.org/" target="_blank">Innisfree</a> in NY State, where a shaded rocky
slope is home to a bewildering variety of naturalised garden plants,
mostly non-native species, but mixed with natives. According to Kate
Kerin, the Landscape Curator there, this would have been planted up
between the 1930s and the early 2000s and gets only limited
maintenance – mostly pulling of grass and tree seedlings. One of
the sights in this fascinating, but also rather precipitous, place is
a big patch of <i>Coreopsis verticillata </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and</span><i>
Convallaria majalis</i> growing completely intertwined, two species
of very different habitats (sun, dry and shade) no gardener would
have put together.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Nigel Dunnett's
planting at<a href="http://www.nigeldunnett.com/barbican/" target="_blank"> the Barbican</a> in London may be only a few years old but
shows enough self-seeding to suggest to me that it could stabilise as
a genuinely ecologically functioning planting. It's essentially a
green roof planting, so seasonal drought will limit grass and weed
growth.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
James Hitchmough's
various plantings, all created from seed, should theoretically, lead
to semi-stable ecosystems, but I have personally not seen one that convinces me,
yet, although some of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park ones may yet
do so, and I have heard good reports of others.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtglIxoP9qmC3X_Pu7ksW0rrK1BapqgcjycSa5Ad5kJ9rtL_KJEJdeLTIDyn0QZ3-XBnyiooW6BMU6BgAnz7J9Owxx8cXx6Ad2BmMJMjwJHACyxzCmk9e7ViN9_XcAUdR3MNoQ6mck5v8U/s1600/IMG_5206.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtglIxoP9qmC3X_Pu7ksW0rrK1BapqgcjycSa5Ad5kJ9rtL_KJEJdeLTIDyn0QZ3-XBnyiooW6BMU6BgAnz7J9Owxx8cXx6Ad2BmMJMjwJHACyxzCmk9e7ViN9_XcAUdR3MNoQ6mck5v8U/s400/IMG_5206.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Barbican, a Nigel Dunnett planting, effectively a green roof, lots of regeneration</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In two gardens in
Herefordshire, I feel I have got pretty close to achieving small
areas of genuine ecological planting, with really dense species
intermingling. In my last garden I ran a trial for seven years which
went someway to convincing me that, in the most challenging situation
of all: fertile moist soil, full sun, this might be possible. These
conditions favour the growth of strongly competitive plants which
could possibly swamp everything else and most dangerously, favour
weedy grass growth. This never happened (success!), but somewhat
disappointingly, an analysis of every 10cms square after seven years,
revealed that there were still a lot of gaps. In reality these could
probably be filled with ground-level creeping species and more
seeding short-lived species. More species need to be packed in to
really create a dense multi-layer habitat. I, like everyone, have a lot to learn here.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What about
Oudolf-style perennials or German Mixed Planting systems, which use
long-lived perennials at around 8-9 plants per square metre? They are
designed to be relatively stable, but also allowing for a certain
amount of self-seeding. They seem like a very good starting point for
a genuinely ecological planting. Not TOO stable though, as that can
preclude any ecological functioning (think prostrate cotoneaster
ground cover).<br />
<br />
And, on the subject of Piet Oudolf, he has created one of the most interesting and successful combinations of an ecological planting (native grasses and wildflowers) and non-native perennials. <a href="http://noels-garden.blogspot.com/2013/11/perennial-meadows-piet-pulls-it-off.html" target="_blank">See here: </a> This approach is certainly one which deserves much more research: but very dependent on having low fertility soils.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV-Enhyphenhyphen8Ge-Ro3n3zheppOWUeFbrPg26Rim5EHJWZgzKaQ34P2TPAvwB-T4NU6oe1LjPsn5b74S7X9NtaqB0oqUhUz11kW2Y1FW3nQfVBOo3yBjTGH7wfbrKmBAdVlWku4ES3YhJNnYHV9/s1600/2013-10-02+07.38.37.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1060" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV-Enhyphenhyphen8Ge-Ro3n3zheppOWUeFbrPg26Rim5EHJWZgzKaQ34P2TPAvwB-T4NU6oe1LjPsn5b74S7X9NtaqB0oqUhUz11kW2Y1FW3nQfVBOo3yBjTGH7wfbrKmBAdVlWku4ES3YhJNnYHV9/s400/2013-10-02+07.38.37.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Piet Oudolf perennial meadow at Hummelo, not typical of his work but
possibly one of the most interesting things he's ever done; combining
genuine ecological functioning and good looks</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The fact is that we
have hardly begun to explore the possibilities of what ecologists are
now calling Novel Ecosystems: “a system of abiotic, biotic, and
social components (and their interactions) that, by virtue of human
influence, differs from those that prevailed historically, having a
tendency to self-organize and manifest novel qualities without
intensive human management.” <a href="https://www.ser.org/news/311030/Whats-Wrong-with-Novel-Ecosystems-Really.htm" target="_blank">quoted here.</a> </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
From now on I'm going
to talk about: NOEs: Novel Ornamental Ecosystems.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Where do we go from
here?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
How do we assemble
plantings that look good, with species from multiple origins that are
so dense that they can offer wildlife as many opportunities as
natural/semi-natural plantings, and which are stable enough to make
maintenance easy?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This is now the
challenge. Let's raise the bar.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz7kflTHePJSAlv6x1CZELb645_KQQqNgQsxZfJignbuc7g7ebgM2Fm5_eroXhyh9YmD2nld37ssIX4TUp8Jg4Wm0dOGHqKjKKF3MoJjWURCLAzrczFo41ZAWNUB7pzobpETTytMgRvO5Q/s1600/DSC_0892.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1064" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz7kflTHePJSAlv6x1CZELb645_KQQqNgQsxZfJignbuc7g7ebgM2Fm5_eroXhyh9YmD2nld37ssIX4TUp8Jg4Wm0dOGHqKjKKF3MoJjWURCLAzrczFo41ZAWNUB7pzobpETTytMgRvO5Q/s400/DSC_0892.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wrong time of year for the flowers but a shaded bank at Innisfree which includes a bewildering range of Novel Ornamental Ecosystem biodiversity</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }</style></div>
Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-5943932056016297872018-08-02T11:12:00.000-07:002018-08-12T07:06:01.899-07:00We have the new perennials but where is the new perennial garden?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A <a href="http://marcsgardens.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-not-so-new-perennial-movement.html" target="_blank">recent blog post </a>by Marc 'le jardinier' is tries to provoke a discussion about whether the so-called
'New Perennial' movement has had much of an impact on British
gardens. His conclusion is 'not much'. The implication is that this
should be a surprise. In many ways I agree with him but I don't think
it is a surprise. So, here I'd like to do one of those roundups where
I look around and survey the scene and ask, “what has really
changed?”. Apart from the interest in this as gardeners and
landscape designers, it's an opportunity to think more widely about
why we garden and about the way that cultural change happens.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The 'New Perennial'
moniker is an annoying one anyway. Anything with 'new' in the title
inevitably comes with a date stamp in the near future. It actually
dates to 1996, when Frances Lincoln decided, in one of those moments
of genius that made everyone else in publishing think “why didn't I
think of that?”, to use it as a title for a book project I had with
her company.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSgGoZNlYWLvuxZigC0oOJAnLH57k5V9SMJ7EztDhpjSHWZC91NpMdonQ71KA1c5bDOO91xl654cdPX3Cgxw7_whRgD3KLFzbuVTs5lZsD_kpcHcOahV3V9Asj_UbPMjKtbkV6ggc5wgcK/s1600/DSC_0027+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSgGoZNlYWLvuxZigC0oOJAnLH57k5V9SMJ7EztDhpjSHWZC91NpMdonQ71KA1c5bDOO91xl654cdPX3Cgxw7_whRgD3KLFzbuVTs5lZsD_kpcHcOahV3V9Asj_UbPMjKtbkV6ggc5wgcK/s400/DSC_0027+copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Nadia Malarky designed garden in Columbus Ohio</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What the 'new' and the
'perennial' flag up though is that there have been enormous changes
in British, and American gardening over the last thirty years, and
one of the biggest has been the revival of interest in herbaceous
perennials. Looking back to the 1980s, it is actually hard to imagine
how people gardened with so few perennials. Anyone who is too young
to remember this time would be astonished now at how garden centres
and nurseries almost entirely sold shrubs and bedding, with
perennials a distinct minority interest. On a recent trip to the US
(primarily Ohio) I was amazed by how many gardens featured
perennials, mostly echinaceas and rudbeckias of course. In the past
there would have been lawn and a square metre of pink phlox if you
were lucky. A great sense of satisfaction, and pride, at having been
part of the movement that has enabled this.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What people have done
with the perennials is another thing. As with the grasses, which have
been an even bigger shift since the 1980s (back then NOBODY in
Britain grew grasses apart from eccentric prophets in the wilderness
like Roger Grounds). On the whole they have slotted their geraniums,
monardas and <i>Carex testacea</i> into the garden format they had before.
Which generally means the borders around the lawn; the ingredients
have changed but the recipe hasn't.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
For those of us, like
the people reading this blog post, who are (and trying not to sound
too superior here) part of the gardening 'elite', acting as
opinion-formers etc., the mismatch between what we think people
should do with 'our' plants and what they actually do with them, may
be considerable. But take an analogy – think of the amateur art
shows we have all been too, usually held in village halls. How many
of the artists have done what the art elite seem to describe as art:
smear mud on the walls, pile up bricks, carry in their unmade bed and
leave it in the middle of the room? None. Elite thinking about art
has not penetrated very far into popular culture (do I hear sounds of
relief?). No-one in the real world seems to want to practice
'conceptual art'. 'Art' for most people does mean: painting, beauty,
colour, form, memory, landscape, portraiture, while Tracy Emin's
unmade bed at the Tate is little more than a provocation to
chattering class dinner parties.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Am I making an analogy
between conceptual art and 'new perennial' gardening? Only in as much
as they are both elite concerns which have not penetrated popular
culture. Personally, I think most conceptual art is crap and new
perennial planting isn't. But then I'm not a conceptual artist whose
just had a fat grant for hanging tampons on a washing line or
whatever.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Most people garden to
relax, unwind and feel close to the sanitised version of nature that
the garden presents us with. They are not interested in trends,
concepts and 'movements'. They want something that looks nice and
makes them feel good. This means that gardening is one of the more
conservative of the arts. And who are we to criticise what people do
in their spare time? And another thing – naturalistic planting is
systems or community thinking. Its about creating plant mixes and
most gardeners do not think like that. They think only in terms of
individual plants and how they like them, and maybe find good
neighbours for them. They are driven by what looks nice down at the
garden centre or the nursery. Fair enough. I don't think we could
expect otherwise.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And another thing! Much
of the naturalistic planting featured in garden magazines is
large-scale. It's Piet O doing parks or those designers who
specialise in large country gardens; some medium-scale and more
'average' gardeners certainly get featured, but there are
surprisingly few who really carry it off. One who has tried is
featured in the September issue of Country Living; Jo Ward-Ellison in
Gloucestershire. Size puts people off. Unnecessarily I think. On of
the virtues of naturalistic planting is that it is about building
plant communities, which are scaleable and work over a range of
sizes. Take a Piet O planting and in many cases you could chop a bit
off and stick in your suburban garden to replace the oh-so-boring
lawn and with a bit of fiddling it would still look good. The main
difference would be that you would be forced to be closer to a lot of
the plants so you would appreciate them in a different way to the
'big picture' view. Perhaps no bad thing.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
More pointedly, I'd
like to ask about how much designers and the landscape profession
have taken on board 'new perennials' or as I'm going to call it from
now on, naturalistic planting? There is no doubt that the range of
plants has been massively increased, although there is still a
problem about how you sell late-season perennials, as they generally
look so awful in pots. The garden centre industry has never really
tried although internet sales have come to the rescue to some extent.
The huge growth in the garden design profession has gone hand in hand
with the perennial explosion although for the most part perennials
are used within those designs in a relatively conventional way.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Most garden designers
still seem to be at the level of slotting individuals together than
creating functioning plant communities.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The landscape
profession, largely under pressure from clients anxious about the
maintenance costs of what they pay for, have been cautious,
understandably. For the most part, they also lack the plant knowledge
to know how to use perennials. Many are anxious to learn, as I can
see from the folk turning up at my workshops
(www.gardenmasterclass.org and www.landscapemasterclass.com).
Knowledge about the long-term performance of perennials is also poor;
something I am endlessly banging on about, and which I try to address
in the workshops.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The big change in
British gardening, and one also increasingly being followed elsewhere
is the 'wildlife gardening' movement. Supported by a strong
grassroots interest in conservation and at what we might call the
'official level', i.e by the RHS, this has made a huge impact, and
again it is difficult to imagine how this could have happened without
the perennial revolution. It stresses diversity, that varied habitats
are the best thing we can do for nature, something that the good old
British 'mixed border' addresses rather well. Crucially, the wildlife
gardening movement also does something else – it gives gardeners
permission to be a bit untidy: weeds, dead leaves, unpruned shrubs.
That has probably helped a great deal.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So, changes there have
certainly been, for the better, but we still have a long way to go.
Changes in garden practice can take a lot longer to take place than
in many other spheres of human activity. More crucial than the
largely aesthetic concerns of New Perennial gardeners are the impacts
that gardening and landscape practice have on sustainability and
wildlife. I'll be considering that next and ask the question “is
anybody out there actually doing ecological planting?”</div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-56468915384818353562018-06-21T06:04:00.003-07:002018-06-21T06:04:37.563-07:00Let's stop talking about 'natural' gardens<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi52P7QWxH-MCd8mey8-iBtavN5LGMIlacrWWuFLijv5CFxt5Yo3h3LtdkCccckkO_4xSProg5ztpvZVEE_oZ3zHn502mEv5-4dsoiWKGGp6rtwAIoup1VAW4UURqx34rjzDIApbvXJEhoA/s1600/51+copy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="931" data-original-width="1400" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi52P7QWxH-MCd8mey8-iBtavN5LGMIlacrWWuFLijv5CFxt5Yo3h3LtdkCccckkO_4xSProg5ztpvZVEE_oZ3zHn502mEv5-4dsoiWKGGp6rtwAIoup1VAW4UURqx34rjzDIApbvXJEhoA/s400/51+copy.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The word 'natural'
must be one of the most abused in the English language. Its use
generally implies 'good', and all-too often 'buy this product'.
Needless to say the two areas of life it gets applied to most are to
do food and gardens. I want to talk here about how meaningless the
concept of the 'natural garden' is, and relate it to wider
discussions about our relationship with nature. I intend this to be
the first of a number of fairly blunt interventions in our ongoing
discussions about our relationship with growing plants.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The sheer moral
emptiness of the 'natural = good' equation was brought home with some
force recently by hearing about how Antarctic penguin colonies are
being starved by ships hoovering up kril, in order to keep the food
supplement industry supplied with a source of omega-3. No doubt the
mountebanks and charletans who populate this most unnecessary of
industries (if you eat properly you wouldn't need 95% of those pills)
feel justified in promoting this as 'natural', which indeed it is,
but sustainable? beneficial? ethical? One day we'll have genetically
manipulated plants to produce the stuff for us. Roll on that day, but
be assured that there will be protests that this is 'unnatural'.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We don't do 'natural'.
We are humans. We stopped eating natural food when we started growing
it. When we moved out of the Garden of Eden that was hunter-gatherer
society and harvested our food from little plots of grain in
clearings in the primordial wilderness is when we stopped eating
naturally. And started farming/gardening. Any cultivated plant is
going to have certain aspects that make it useful for us, and
distinctly dysfunctional in an wild environment with no human
intervention. That seems to me to be a pretty clear break-point
between what is 'natural' and what is not. The ur-break-point for us
grain-eating Eurasians was when our ancestors picked out some grains
whose seed heads did not shatter; very useful for picking and shoving
in a basket, pretty useless at distributing the plant.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Virtually all our
crops will not survive for more than a few generations as
'volunteers' i.e. self-sowing, and if they do it is because they will
be evolving 'backwards' rapidly. Agriculture/farming is a profoundly
unnatural business, and it is the most destructive of nature of all
our activities, simply because of its scale and the impact it has on
soil and climate and most of all on natural vegetation. That includes
organic agriculture, which is no more keen on weeds in the crop than
conventional, and is arguably more destructive as it is so
inefficient in its use of space it leads inevitably to more land
being under cultivation, and so even less room for nature. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Gardening is just a
diddy version of farming, but potentially much less damaging,
depending on what we are doing. Growing cabbages and carrots to eat,
where, in order to have any crop, we have to eliminate or exclude an
awful lot of nature: weeds, insects, birds etc., is clearly more
destructive than most ornamental gardening. In North America, organic
growing is referred to as 'natural', which is a sleight of hand as
there is nothing remotely natural about growing unnatural plants
completely dependent on humans for their reproduction in straight
lines in beds of bare earth. Or even in circles like some hippies
have done.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Gardens are not
natural and it is high time to stop pretending that they are. They
are a regimented version of nature which we make because we like the
outcome, and which make us feel good. Nothing intrinsically wrong
about that. I have never willingly used the word 'natural' to
describe the kind of garden-making I promote, although a good handful
of book and magazine editors have tried to get me to do just that.
'Naturalistic' is a lot more accurate, implying as it does, that you
are aiming at implying something with no pretensions to actually ever
achieving it. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In making a garden we
are applying human culture to natural or semi-natural ingredients -
semi-natural in the case of radish seed or double roses, natural in
the case of an 'unimproved' species genetically identical to wild
forebears. We seek to eliminate what we do not like or that which
does not fit in with our artistic vision. In a naturalistic garden we
grow and manage what occupies a kind of middle ground, a tidied-up
version of nature which may be inspired by a natural or semi-natural
environment and even be made up of 100% locally-native species, but
which is nevertheless our vision. It is not natural.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We like to encourage
wildlife into our gardens, which is good, and indeed of all the
developments that have happened in my lifetime (I'm 60 btw), this is,
I think, far and away the most ethically positive. But of course we
only want the 'nice' wildlife, not the kind we think of as
destructive. The concept of the wildlife garden does not always
translate well either – go anywhere where there are poisonous
snakes and you have to think about the relationship between plant
density and human recreation spaces very differently.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The evidence (<a href="http://www.bugs.group.shef.ac.uk/" target="_blank">BUGSproject</a>) etc. is that ornamental
gardens can support a lot of wildlife, more than arable farmed
countryside, so that's a good thing. Simply leaving many gardens to
go wild might be handing them over to nature, in the sense of letting
natural processes take over, but in many cases the level of
biodiversity they end up supporting may actually be less than an
ornamental garden, the reason being that a competitive 'weedy'
species may take over and dominate for a good many years: brambles,
pasture grasses like cocksfoot grass, or nettles. A garden actively
managed for wildlife interest may be less 'natural' but be more
biodiverse. That's a paradox that should cast doubt on how we use
'natural' in the context of gardening. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What I'm leading up to
is to flag up a remarkable and important essay by the science writer
Emma Marris, whose book Rambunctious Garden I mentioned in a blog
post a few years ago – see <a href="http://noels-garden.blogspot.com/search?q=Rambunctious+" target="_blank">Beyond 'nature as virgin – garden aswhore</a>'. In '<a href="https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-7/can-we-love-nature-and-let-it-go" target="_blank">Can we love natureand let it go?', </a>Marris proposes the
concept of 'decoupling', essentially arguing that reliance on
supposedly natural processes may be less sustainable and more
destructive of nature than artificial ones; she uses grass-fed beef
as a good example, a trendy, feel-good but grossly unsustainable food
source. Decoupling nature and humanity allows us stop exploiting
nature and effectively give it some space. She looks forward to 'lab
meat' and other hi-tech alternatives to eating animals. She also
flags up, with some powerful statistics, the sheer inefficiency of
organic farming, particularly in terms of the much greater amount of
space it takes up compared to conventional, and indeed her essay
starts off with a wonderfully sharp crit of an upscale residential
development integrated with little patches of organic farmland to
make the new (inevitably well-heeled) residents feel like they are
doing the world a good turn. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
My reading of her idea
of 'decoupling' is that if stop pretending we can do so much
'naturally', 'in tune' with nature etc. we could actually use land
and resources a lot more efficiently and sustainably – and so give
more space to nature, or to what James Hitchmough of Sheffield
University calls 'enhanced nature', plantings designed for aesthetic
benefit but also with positive biodiversity benefits. Indeed, looking
historically, in a way we have already done this with our gardens. In
the past we would have been far more self-sufficient, growing veg in
our gardens; now these domestic spaces are taken up with more
wildlife-friendly ornamental trees, shrubs and perennials, so
bringing about the relatively rich biodiversity of contemporary
suburbia. We have decoupled our food supply from our gardens with
positive results. Most domestic veg growing is so inefficient in its
use of space and resources it is very doubtful if it contributes much
to achieving any kind of sustainability brownie-points. Especially if
raised beds (one of my pet hates) are used. It has an educational
value – teaching children where their food comes from, and this is
very valuable, but basically it's recreational. Nothing wrong with
that at all, just don't try to pretend that its saving the world, or
even particularly sustainable.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If we stop using the
word 'natural' to describe what we do in our gardens, we can free our
minds up to think about what sort of outcomes we want and can expect.
Primarily places that give us pleasure, and yes, give us contact with
a domesticated version of nature, but secondly to look objectively at
what benefits undomesticated nature in the form of birds, bees and
butterflies gets from our gardens.
</div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-23519737017454979332018-06-07T05:44:00.005-07:002018-06-07T05:44:51.938-07:00So often it's gardeners make great gardens not owners or designers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br /><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I recently had an
upsetting email from a colleague and friend who has just had his last
day at the job he has had for nearly twenty years. He feels forced
out because of decisions made about his job, over his head, which
will so change the nature of what he does so much that he no longer
wants to be part of the garden he has worked on, and whose reputation
he has played a big part in building up. It was his efforts and ideas
that put the garden on the map as a very distinctive project; the
management now have other ideas. It's a story you hear time and time
again unfortunately.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Any look at historical
gardens makes clear that the successful ones were where there was a
head gardener and owner pulling in the same direction. Toby
Musgrave's recent book on head gardeners makes this clear. Some head
gardeners indeed rather tyrannised their owners. I can imagine a
number of Victorian garden owners, Lord this or that, who might have
been a great power in the land (and indeed over their tenants),
dreading a meeting with their head gardener. The man's status (in
charge of a large team), hold over the family (producer of all the
fruit, vegetables and cut flowers, which his cook and crucially, his
wife, would expect daily deliveries of as a matter of course),
knowledge (all those Latin names) and demeanour, could combine to
make Lord Whatsit feel very small and humble indeed.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Those days are gone,
and head gardeners of large gardens now work with diminished staff
and, it has to be said, status. The biggest problems are often with
gardens that are open to the public, and therefore run as businesses.
The head gardener here will have a major impact on income. If the
garden is run on a charitable basis then there will be a trust to
whom the head gardener will be ultimately responsible (or 'board' in
the US). The role of a trust is to oversee the charity, ensure that
it is financially successful, and fulfils all its legal obligations.
A good trust has clear objectives, consults the staff and works with
them to enable them to make a success of the project. All too often
however, trusts are made up of people who may have been very
successful in some walk of life but know next-to-nothing about
gardening. They may like gardens, but if they have never had
experience in getting thousands of bedding plants ready for going in
by mid-May, overseeing the replanting of an entire border, or dealing
with a fallen tree the day before opening, then they will inevitably
need a good imagination, and considerable humility, in approaching
the task of how to give advice to somebody who can do all of these
things. From the perspective of the gardener, too many people on
trusts are interfering busy-bodies who have no idea what they are
talking about.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Maximising income is a
key goal of a trust. This can of course be used as a weapon to drive
through all sorts of changes, often in the direction of thinking that
the more people you get through the gates, the more the garden earns.
The great danger here will be 'dumbing down', bringing in events, or
developing areas that are 'lowest common denominator', avoiding
innovation, experimentation or any sort of trying to stand above the
common herd, and therefore taking a risk. I think this is what might
have happened in my friend's case; the trust want to increase visitor
numbers: roses are popular: => more roses = more visitors = more
income: never mind that roses will not grow especially well there
(they haven't asked the gardener). Another garden I knew decided to
try to get more families in by having a scarecrow competition; ok. I
can imagine that in a garden that actually grew vegetables this might
have been a good idea, but it wasn't; the result – droves of
overdressed scarecrows in borders of perennials, poking up amongst
shrubs, hoist in the rockery etc.; the garden ended up looking
ridiculous.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Bringing in volunteers
is a way of getting more work done in the garden that appeals to
trusts. There is the feel-good social mission of using volunteers as
well. But has the head gardener got any management skills? Quite
possibly not. Well-managed volunteers can transform a garden;
badly-managed ones can (and do) wreck chaos and destruction. I hear
so many stories of head gardeners being expected to manage volunteers
and not being given any choice in the matter. The worst was a
National Trust garden that decided it would offer horticultural
therapy and expected the head gardener to take on a variety of people
with a range of 'issues' and help turn their lives around. No
consultation. No offer of staff help from people who had any interest
in therapy or knowledge of it. She left. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Another mad idea that
trusts or owners indulge in is that of getting rid of head gardeners
altogether and replacing them with the occasional visit of a
consultant. I got wind of one such job assassination once, it was
even hinted that I might like to be the 'consultant'. Apparently it
was going to save a lot of money. The feedback I gave was that I
thought it would be a disaster, and anyway, anyone who took the
consultancy would probably find themselves face down in a compost
heap with a sharpened trowel in their back. The head gardener
concerned had a national reputation; the garden has since gone
massively downhill. What a surprise.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It is the failure to
talk to and listen to head gardeners and their staff that is so
unbelievably arrogant and foolish. In the case of the garden I
started to talk about, the result will almost certainly be to kill
off one of the most successful genuinely innovative gardens in
Britain. It will become just another vaguely historic rose-packed
garden scrabbling for visitor numbers in competition with all the
others.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-27697667044357347032018-04-10T10:41:00.000-07:002018-04-10T10:41:00.248-07:00Australian plants amaze, astonish and confuse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpifG9tVZCTqHYjZzNJtWTpERxmF9eqxbaXlohibQFTEEEGIwAqv_s1kP66C-dXV98VCnh9lgdnvS4YkK9719YIV0xZQIbkGde_bzvFlmEewifBM46LmsrOlpoRoV0e5X7CUQKnFeNKeZR/s1600/2018-03-22+00.54.39.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpifG9tVZCTqHYjZzNJtWTpERxmF9eqxbaXlohibQFTEEEGIwAqv_s1kP66C-dXV98VCnh9lgdnvS4YkK9719YIV0xZQIbkGde_bzvFlmEewifBM46LmsrOlpoRoV0e5X7CUQKnFeNKeZR/s400/2018-03-22+00.54.39.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The stunning landscape installation by Kate Cullity at the Cranbourne Botanic Garden, Melbourne, evokes the Australian Outback</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Still mulling over my
recent but brief trip to Australia. We'd spent most of our time 'down
under' in New Zealand, followed by a week in Tasmania before a week
in Melbourne at the biennial Australian Landscape Conference. This
was a fantastic event, organised by Warwick Forge, a retired
publisher and entrepreneur. I am sure the fact that Warwick is not a
professional 'landscape person' has been one of the reasons for the
success of the conference; an ability to see beyond immediate
professional concerns and trends. It also probably helps explain why
the conference was a real coming together of professionals, and some
amateurs, from the world of horticulture as well as landscape.
Gardeners and landscape folk meet together on equal terms all too
rarely.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Warwick first
approached me about speaking at the conference nearly two years ago.
He does his homework well. Being a retired chap of independent means
he is able to spend time traveling around meeting people and checking
them out to ensure that the resulting two day conference and
workshops really delivers passion, stimulation and knowledge. I
remember we agreed to meet in Oxford and spent an afternoon wandering
about the Botanical Garden, discussing what I did and what I knew of
what my colleagues did. I remember Warwick asking me “if I invited
you to speak, who else would you like to speak?”. I'm a ferocious
networker so I was able to make plenty of suggestions. Cassian
Schmidt was my first choice, the director of the Hermannshof Garden
in the Rhine valley and increasingly a leading teacher of planting
design through a post at Geisenheim University. Thinking of parched
Australian landscapes however, I had to admit that what we had to say
might be only rather partially relevant.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Shortly before I met
Warwick, I had been in Spain and met <a href="http://urquijokastner.com/" target="_blank">Miguel Urquijo</a>, whose
ground-breaking approach to garden design in Spain and deep
thoughtfulness about what he did, had really impressed me. So I told
Warwick about him. A few weeks later I learnt that Warwick had more
or less straight away flown to Madrid to meet Miguel. I had also
insisted to him that if he invite Cassian he ask his wife Bettina
Jaugstetter too, as she is emerging as a very interesting planting
designer in her own right. She was asked to run two workshops, but of
course she worried that “no-one has heard of me, so no-one will
come”; apparently though, hers filled up before anyone else's – a
strong indication that the reputation of contemporary German planting
design has great pulling power. I wonder whether she would have got such a good audience in Britain? I fear perhaps not.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A real feature of the
ALCs over the years has been the pre-conference speakers' tours
whereby the speakers are crammed into a mini-bus to tour gardens and
landscapes in the state of Victoria. The day we went to the stunning
new botanical gardens at <a href="https://www.rbg.vic.gov.au/visit-cranbourne" target="_blank">Cranbourne</a>, and then <a href="http://www.kuranga.com.au/" target="_blank">Kuranga Nursery</a> was a
memorable one. For me it was a meeting with old friends.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCOOFShwZfj7xACqkuPFepZhT-eiT1-Oe0fk95Po1gXFaJvjOz_qE_hAHsChmjdkvd7IKWCYP4vFFZvkT5rXzDI8K0WlsPIDtK0-zfJxzmTUc3Ea98zzlIVBTK2jaRd_j6kc0DBoTtyANl/s1600/Banksia+menziesii.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCOOFShwZfj7xACqkuPFepZhT-eiT1-Oe0fk95Po1gXFaJvjOz_qE_hAHsChmjdkvd7IKWCYP4vFFZvkT5rXzDI8K0WlsPIDtK0-zfJxzmTUc3Ea98zzlIVBTK2jaRd_j6kc0DBoTtyANl/s400/Banksia+menziesii.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Banksia marginata</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
A zillion years ago,
in the late eighties and early nineties, I had a small nursery
business near Bristol. Mostly growing perennials. Which, for the
youngsters amongst the blog-readers, were not particularly widely
grown at the time - astonishing though this might seem to you. But, I
grew a rather zany range of half-hardy stuff as well, with a
particular focus on Australian plants. The reason for this rather
eccentric choice was that there was a sudden fashion for
conservatories but hardly anyone growing plants for them. Most of the
new conservatories popping up featured little more than a
dehydrated <i>Ficus benjamina </i>and a few spider plants. Looking at the
prevailing conditions and doing a bit of research into what the
Victorians grew in conservatories, an obvious choice seemed to plants
from southern Australia. Important was the ability to cope with
occasional high temperatures and lows to near, or just below
freezing. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_qCJgON8r4n5C4pWgk10BAnw0V1QJo3kYnrGkgvST4zLYWF-RQ4yaroLc5VD_WeQQqphgnvLF3qqrd2ab8kBk9soPD1OyCFoS9Y0p8fIRg45H4ke3us72wK32DDcWF3r3hcJ_Re8JlMXk/s1600/Xanthorrhea+australis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_qCJgON8r4n5C4pWgk10BAnw0V1QJo3kYnrGkgvST4zLYWF-RQ4yaroLc5VD_WeQQqphgnvLF3qqrd2ab8kBk9soPD1OyCFoS9Y0p8fIRg45H4ke3us72wK32DDcWF3r3hcJ_Re8JlMXk/s400/Xanthorrhea+australis.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Xanthorrhoea australis </i>- the Grass Tree, at Cranbourne</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The idea of actually using your conservatory to grow plants in never took off, unfortunately, and today many conservatories, if they have any flora at all, are still likely to have only a dehydrated <i>Ficus benjamina</i> and three spider plants. However, I found myself selling plants to many people in the South West, including some heritage gardens like Tresco which had had some bad winters and needed to replenish their stocks. I used to trek up to London every month to set up a stand at what were then the monthly Royal Horticultural Society shows. Although the Australian and other exotica were only a small part of what I grew, they were a useful flagship for getting interest in the nursery and publicity generally.<br />
My choice in growing
the range of plants I did had been bolstered by researching (in the
RHS library) what early 19<sup>th</sup> century gardeners grew. Early
glasshouses and conservatories had pretty primitive heating systems,
which produced dry air and often failed. The technology coincided
with the botanical exploration of South Africa and Australia, and
gardening journals of the time are full of beautiful hand-coloured
prints of Cape Heaths (Erica species), Australian Banksias and
Melaleucas. So it was these that I focussed on growing. Seed was
easily come by and they germinated easily enough. Well, I grew the
ones that were easy to germinate – there is a whole tranche of
Australian flora that is notoriously difficult from seed - I never bothered with them. Species of
<i>Banksia</i> and <i>Dryandra </i>from Western Australia were particular
favourites, both with myself and the public at the RHS shows. With
tough, slightly silvery leaves, often looking as if they had been cut
with scissors, and extraordinary flowers that looked and felt like
plastic, they seemed like plants from another planet. Tending
to be small and compact, they were ideal as container plants. Perfect
'talking point' plants. However the Australian literature on them at
the time stressed how difficult they were to grow. As it turned out,
this was a reflection of the fact that species from the Mediterranean
climate of Southwest Australia did not adapt very well to the humid
summers of the southeasterly states of Victoria and New South Wales
where the majority of the gardening population live. Adapted to soils
of extreme infertility they did not like conditions in 'ordinary'
soil either.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhexxg7A3IvPgLI76e9LbKfAcfc_a8Xckf8H2oicIkGjxb8SeIdojj5-zS2TbHKgYmhziSFqWOhWFUmi7wZ52XiO7_MqSBkT37WI9ExCeu80iYHl3LIWXxzO5WjD9wgaIyshqCycaGUmsug/s1600/Banksia+blechnifolia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhexxg7A3IvPgLI76e9LbKfAcfc_a8Xckf8H2oicIkGjxb8SeIdojj5-zS2TbHKgYmhziSFqWOhWFUmi7wZ52XiO7_MqSBkT37WI9ExCeu80iYHl3LIWXxzO5WjD9wgaIyshqCycaGUmsug/s400/Banksia+blechnifolia.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Banksia blechnifolia</i> - the flowers mimic hair curlers -its officially a shrub by the way</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Growing many of my
'Australians' in a mix of three-quarters sharp grit and one quarter
peat, I found <i>Banksia </i>and <i>Dryandra </i>thrived, flowering in three years.
Doing better in a richer compost were various species and cultivars
of <i>Callistemon, Melaleuca</i> and <i>Correa. </i>Although I failed to displace
the sad-looking <i>Ficus benjamina </i>and spider plants from the
conservatories of England, something else happened. People started
buying the these plants and sticking them outside in sheltered
places. Many did very well in coastal Cornwall and Devon, or even
inner London. The 1990s saw milder winters, increasing importation of
southern hemisphere species and a taste for 'architectural' plants,
bringing about radical changes in what we grew.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Back to the ALC
speakers' outing. At Kuranga Nursery we saw the largest range of
Australian native species commercially available. For me it was
thrilling, never having been here before, to see so many of these
plants growing to full size. I have not grown any of these for years,
but seeing them brought back a rush of memories. And reading names on
labels, particularly where I had read about genera that were
'impossible' to grow from seed, and seeing the plants for the first
time, was a real thrill.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNi2L-E7I5I8bQz0CZcXTaW-emPvycRdxSP6WcHXDlf1sMsFFH1ZNFj3rgwbC6OsG28RGXui9kHUQtSUTWbHxkTgWmgdL31narahGrux5ceua7phNnnRdtHSjzN74NaRTemV4045gOdpAp/s1600/2018-03-22+05.43.18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1065" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNi2L-E7I5I8bQz0CZcXTaW-emPvycRdxSP6WcHXDlf1sMsFFH1ZNFj3rgwbC6OsG28RGXui9kHUQtSUTWbHxkTgWmgdL31narahGrux5ceua7phNnnRdtHSjzN74NaRTemV4045gOdpAp/s400/2018-03-22+05.43.18.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Others on the tour
were perplexed. It was particularly funny watching Cassian and
Bettina, who, being from Germany, are unable to grow any of this
outside, had no familiarity with anything they saw. They appeared to
be completely disorientated, truly suffering the shock of 'arriving
on another botanical planet'. The fact that so much had a superficial
similarity with the familiar, added to the disorientation. Plants
from dry environments have a strong tendency to look the same, but
then surprise by producing exotically different flowers to their
northern hemisphere look-alikes. At one point Bettina came up to me
waving a plant in a pot, “it looks so much like a cistus” she exclaimed,
“but it isn't, the name means nothing to me”; she looked genuinely upset. Cassian was
complaining about families he had never heard of. Densely-packed
sales benches offered novelty, thrill and disorientation in equal
measure.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I'll leave with two
little snippets. One was the thrill of seeing <i>Epacris</i> for the first
time. A genus of heather-like plants (all <i>Epacridaceae</i> have now been
disgorged into <i>Ericaceae</i> by the way) these appeared to have been very
popular throughout the 19<sup>th</sup> century. Winter-flowering,
they must have been easy to propagate from cuttings as they must have
been widely sold as flowering pot plants, and given what can be read
about their cultivation in Victorian gardening journals, often kept
from year to year. There were around twenty or so named cultivars.
And then they vanished. When I had the nursery I was never able to
source seed. I never even saw one at Kew Gardens. Seeing them on this
trip was the first time I had ever set eyes on them. Roger Elliott,
the leading writer on Australian natives who accompanied us on this
trip did explain that there is a great deal of variation in flower
colour, which was probably one reason for their popularity.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJv_wSae2EsWvGz44XOoiArvzyIRQWurm2P0VWFf_wFHsJnqTnAMRbskM_XkNXPUZcUL5kvGLAZoFPzbG_p4g4Fk_DKbVjFIrIzk_PTAnOLZ8lV60tHl1lJQKlaoMMCEmT-6Tb_X6DCMOx/s1600/2018-03-22+05.35.07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJv_wSae2EsWvGz44XOoiArvzyIRQWurm2P0VWFf_wFHsJnqTnAMRbskM_XkNXPUZcUL5kvGLAZoFPzbG_p4g4Fk_DKbVjFIrIzk_PTAnOLZ8lV60tHl1lJQKlaoMMCEmT-6Tb_X6DCMOx/s400/2018-03-22+05.35.07.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Epacris impressa</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Finally, <i>Dryandra</i>.
When I grew these at the nursery, I was struck by the extraordinary
scent of their flowers. Sweet, exotic, quite unlike anything else. No
mention in any of the literature about them. Leafing through a couple
of more recently-published books on the well-stocked Kuranga Nursery
shelves, only the most minimal mention. Perhaps they are only
fragrant abroad. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
</div>
Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-17800175517401038952018-03-08T22:14:00.001-08:002018-03-08T22:14:40.126-08:00The New Zealand look - the colony's revenge?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2t5778vp2rFPwK542NorzpOjKgvqdyGJjyWOSf-gtOdTVTe6UPApOn5BkFRE7I4mn0TXz_rImzjE33ilGvQN-KeqLlZr9PVkV-Bi1726I6d-FYPE3-idtGK6qx-iInAsPtHFszGwdsIiL/s1600/2018-02-28+22.05.56.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2t5778vp2rFPwK542NorzpOjKgvqdyGJjyWOSf-gtOdTVTe6UPApOn5BkFRE7I4mn0TXz_rImzjE33ilGvQN-KeqLlZr9PVkV-Bi1726I6d-FYPE3-idtGK6qx-iInAsPtHFszGwdsIiL/s400/2018-02-28+22.05.56.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> First
time in New Zealand. Which is a bit like arriving on another planet
in plant terms. But not others – very strange travelling such a
long way to arrive somewhere s</span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">o white and anglo-saxon, although the
Maori gets many a respectful nod in wayside or visitor destination
interpretation. Its a fascinating place to appreciate plants in a
very different way to what we Northern Hemisphereans are used to, but
also to consider the human impact on landscape and environmental
history. The following is obviously a brief first impression.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe8JrHkfxizjsctqJVdPbtrwbQBcZMkbwMSCuNkbx1hnzWEIfIhMMFxhPOEFT5yvoZ-6f9haBKpquTSNT7I6V8OsjdWG7ZUV8QEA7fF2phMfgsw_k3AS5iQhnDLgTVANkOwiHc-u5RoB81/s1600/2018-02-18+02.43.42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe8JrHkfxizjsctqJVdPbtrwbQBcZMkbwMSCuNkbx1hnzWEIfIhMMFxhPOEFT5yvoZ-6f9haBKpquTSNT7I6V8OsjdWG7ZUV8QEA7fF2phMfgsw_k3AS5iQhnDLgTVANkOwiHc-u5RoB81/s400/2018-02-18+02.43.42.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> To
start with, the aesthetic quality of the flora is so totally
different to anything we know from the northern hemisphere, in
evolutionary terms it is a very old flora derived from a tropical
origin: all very graphic, and textural: tree ferns, Araliaceae, big
grasses, Phormiums, and overwhelmingly evergreen and woody. Almost no
perennials and almost no colour. Green, green, green - again, very
tropical. No herbaceous softness. Our northern hemisphere flora must
look very dull to a Kiwi, despite the colour of our flowers. It's a
flora which looks amazingly neat and almost designed – at one point
Jo pointed at some plants by the side of the road and exclaimed “it
looks like some posh garden designer's been in and done it all”. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9624LqdURjPV93yQJZqYRzxN6R8zc8b8teP9bMQvT6iWtqqY0M9y-laHTtdmEyHM1FdRcOAutUWj5bjeKskYwpWIaOKB4N3FmXIsMNPe8LsDQbXRM6ipvQu1cPlQ4qh1ayvAnd2zFEq_w/s1600/Blechnum+novae-zelandiae.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9624LqdURjPV93yQJZqYRzxN6R8zc8b8teP9bMQvT6iWtqqY0M9y-laHTtdmEyHM1FdRcOAutUWj5bjeKskYwpWIaOKB4N3FmXIsMNPe8LsDQbXRM6ipvQu1cPlQ4qh1ayvAnd2zFEq_w/s400/Blechnum+novae-zelandiae.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blechnum novae-zelandiae covers a great many near vertical rock surfaces</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> On
the wet south and west coast of the South Island it is the
cryptograms (non-flowering plants) which are so amazing. This is the
Land of the Fern. So many species. Big, tough muscular things,
All-Blacks rugby-playing plants, not like our flimsy-mimsy ferns
backhome. Coating banks, retaining walls, even replacing grass as a
sunny habitat ground cover. Filmy ferns in the woods, all the way up
trees. They are the ones with leaves only one cell thick, so you can
see your hand through them if you hold them. Mosses, foliose
liverworts and lichens of an unbelievable size. Club mosses up to a
metre long dangling down banks or off trees. And the ultimate
botanical nerdy treasure - Tmesipteris, a living fossil, with
virtually no close relatives. Its like tripping: you just stand and
stare at everything in a hypnotic botanical trance, the sheer level
of diversity in a few cm2. is mind-blowing. Things I have never seen
before, even on super-wet Yakushima (Japan) or the tropics, like
weird mounds of vegetation which form over rotting timber or huge
mossy lumps, a metre across, way up high in trees, or astelias or
pandanus-relatives coating entire tree trunks with what looks like
superisize grass. But almost no flowers, at least visibly. On our
travels, admittedly in late summer, there were red metrosideros
flowers and a teeny-weeny orchid and that was about it. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> New
Zealand's geological history has isolated it from the rest of the
world, so plant evolution took off in a direction that was quite
different to anywhere else. Its human history has been very recent,
compared to the rest of the globe, and its impact on the natural
world here has been sudden and drastic. Pioneers are very often
rapacious in their exploitation of the novel environments they
encounter, and New Zealand had the misfortune to get a double whammy
within a few centuries. Polynesians arrived in around 1250, ancestors
of the Maori, and as they did across the Pacific, ate their way
through local bird populations, here wiping out the moas, enormous
flightless birds that were the key predator of many plant species; as
well as burning down much of the forest. British settlers arrived in
the 19<sup>th</sup> century and proceeded to fell every tree they
could get their saws into and destroy vast areas of natural habitat
to make way for sheep. Adding insult to injury to the ecology they
decided that the country was to be a 'new Britain', and imported a
whole suite of British wildlife, including various predators like
stoats and weasels, which then ate their way through much of the
remaining birdlife.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj38zsDcLWq8JWJTC8822-wV05IHBPYW3GeGMLi85zhxDfqKcSpsdfdTzoYjVk1xQMHvWOY384mxXtNtWX7f0mVc3w4rKC8JK2fAEUwbaUAyUp65r585kla7VNJPcinRQLEAeEh6UplBYbn/s1600/2018-02-28+22.31.02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="1200" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj38zsDcLWq8JWJTC8822-wV05IHBPYW3GeGMLi85zhxDfqKcSpsdfdTzoYjVk1xQMHvWOY384mxXtNtWX7f0mVc3w4rKC8JK2fAEUwbaUAyUp65r585kla7VNJPcinRQLEAeEh6UplBYbn/s400/2018-02-28+22.31.02.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> One
of the odd things about being here is the extreme disjuncture between
genuinely natural and 'created' landscapes. There are huge areas of
pretty well untouched wilderness, a lot of it along the west coast,
mainly terrain that must have been too steep too log. Because of the
wet (we are talking metres of rain per year) this is the part of the
country that is so insanely biodiverse, especially for ferns and
other 'primitive' plants. Much else, especially along the east coast
or the south is a very functional agricultural landscape, with almost
nothing native to be seen over huge stretches. Pasture grasses (a
European import), and imported tree species and that's it; the
absence of anything original is quite bizarre, but then there was
almost nothing in the native flora which was herbaceous and could
have integrated itself into this agricultural landscape. In North
America, by contrast, also a continent colonised by European pasture
grasses, local wildflower species survive along roadsides in even the
most ag-intensive places.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcUThFa87KmIVNDSv3Sztb6ugwTDq4kA7f6cF3ydxkRfC1QyfaQYizssn4IJqfk7-T_EYP6clTApAAnNMk7UrI2tF0tbB9aNA0e1_TU_A8vhlG5yHT2ZJSxhU81lL88VOelCtWML53vebH/s1600/2018-03-02+00.09.07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="1200" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcUThFa87KmIVNDSv3Sztb6ugwTDq4kA7f6cF3ydxkRfC1QyfaQYizssn4IJqfk7-T_EYP6clTApAAnNMk7UrI2tF0tbB9aNA0e1_TU_A8vhlG5yHT2ZJSxhU81lL88VOelCtWML53vebH/s400/2018-03-02+00.09.07.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="st">Sticherus cunninghamii, Umbrella Fern</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> There
is an irony here. Just as much of New Zealand has been turned into a
copy of a European landscape (albeit a very functional one) we seem
to be determined to turn our designed landscapes into a copy of New
Zealand. I'm not just referring to the large NZ component in our
landscaping plant flora; in rough order of widespread use: hebes,
phormiums, cordylines, pittosporums and brown Carex sedges, but to
the fact that what we want in an urban landscape – evergreen,
compact, predictable, interesting foliage, is what much NZ vegetation
looks like. As climate changes and it becomes practicable to grow
more NZ plant material, then I am sure this proportion will increase.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOaEBBTV_5eYeLJq21hERuF8Myg36DURwFjte8vFfRFPZ7YJMTCjZpZrlurpaIMqh3Ot7aPwx38Wp0BwvVRPOAei9w9N1_mN53B6raTxgzZNAyjB6acW7VvNpPWTW1IjqsblVEFwlyf89W/s1600/Hebe+wild.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOaEBBTV_5eYeLJq21hERuF8Myg36DURwFjte8vFfRFPZ7YJMTCjZpZrlurpaIMqh3Ot7aPwx38Wp0BwvVRPOAei9w9N1_mN53B6raTxgzZNAyjB6acW7VvNpPWTW1IjqsblVEFwlyf89W/s400/Hebe+wild.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> British
gardeners fell in love with hebes as soon as they began to arrive in
the early 20<sup>th</sup> century (but they were then classified as
Veronica) and the first hybrids were exported back to NZ. They are
ideal for windy mild climates, like the south and west of Britain;
the rest of Europe and the US, not surprisingly showed no interest in
them. Pittosporums and various other NZ plants appeared during the
same period but tended to be restricted to Cornwall and other benign
climates. Then in the 1980s container loads of NZ propagated plants
were imported wholesale and we had more to play with. Phormiums took
off almost immediately, and I remember developing something of a
dislike of them. They suddenly started appearing everywhere, often in
places that were quite unsuitable, and what was once seen as a rather
magnificent exotic plant seemed in danger of becoming a cliché. The
same could be said of <i>Cordyline australis</i> in gardens, which began to
make big inroads with the arrival of milder winters and the growing
trend in 'exotic' and 'architectural' planting, during the 1990s. For
those who could afford them, tree ferns (mostly in fact<i> Dicksonia
antarctica </i>imports from Australia), began to sprout too in sheltered
London gardens, although London is really too dry for them to be a
serious long-term proposition. They look far more at home in Cornwall
or west Wales where they are much more at home (and can even 'seed').</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivCsSpuTisSKgRUxZpwz3tEiqt0mz-D0siX8Suk1bRFeI8dnXuunbvJJ5Fra5zD7FbjITQk-vGTnkJd8pAXsXs4BU0VJLbf2CdQd0M9h0sElotsrI4wgs1eoD_zMtwAPRAr_3_IzW6ZpWh/s1600/Pachystegia+insignis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="1200" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivCsSpuTisSKgRUxZpwz3tEiqt0mz-D0siX8Suk1bRFeI8dnXuunbvJJ5Fra5zD7FbjITQk-vGTnkJd8pAXsXs4BU0VJLbf2CdQd0M9h0sElotsrI4wgs1eoD_zMtwAPRAr_3_IzW6ZpWh/s400/Pachystegia+insignis.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pachystegia insignis - one of the hunky-chunky windproof species so evident in the NZ flora</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Other
NZ plants began to appear at the same time, but did not make much of
an impact. Although a lot of the flora has that chunky, graphic look,
there is also a lot which, almost as a contrast, is quite the
opposite: shrubs with very fine-textured foliage and very dense
growth. The distinctive growth pattern of a lot of these may well
have been an adaptation to reduce attractiveness to the extinct moa
birds. <i>Coprosma, Pseudowintera, Corokia,</i> all known perhaps to the
(woody) plantsman, but none have made much of an impact. There being
evergreen and having such neat shapes seems guaranteed to endear them
to us. Looking at some of the denser coprosmas, rather a pity I
think, as they look to me as if they could be the best replacement
for pest and disease prone box yet. </span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxeY-a1oV2K8GzGOMvOMASm9S4OTD_8ZsBxUyy29nNwzKv1G7sDHjzD22N0pEB11vMxUk8-QllR6h9vHBdYs5n_M2VSJVDFGjz9owvV6iiM1OLuXYv6oy3iVyCgGYj0aUa_h34APxmE24b/s1600/Coprosma+sp.+as+hedging+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="1200" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxeY-a1oV2K8GzGOMvOMASm9S4OTD_8ZsBxUyy29nNwzKv1G7sDHjzD22N0pEB11vMxUk8-QllR6h9vHBdYs5n_M2VSJVDFGjz9owvV6iiM1OLuXYv6oy3iVyCgGYj0aUa_h34APxmE24b/s400/Coprosma+sp.+as+hedging+.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Quite the opposite of the above - a small-leaved Coprosma species makes a bril hedge - possible box substitute?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> What
did not appear much in the 1990s and have still to make much of an
impact, surprisingly, are a whole suite of<i> Araliaceae</i>. Like all
members of the ivy family, they start off with one leaf shape and
produce another at maturity. Many of us may be familiar with
<i>Pseudopanax crassifolius,</i> and of these many of us probably rate it as
the ugliest plant out; however its juvenile 'is it dead?' leaves are
probably an adaptation against moas too. Others are more 'normal'
looking and I'm surprised more have not shown up in British nurseries
and gardens. For those looking to increase the distinctive foliage
look in their gardens there is an awful lot to learn here and try
out, whilst at the same time reflecting why it is that 'we' (Brits at
any rate), having done 'our' best to turn one place into another
Britain, we are now determined to make our urban landscapes as much
like New Zealand as possible.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijIQokv2rdVuZ83000p5wdiRiV0cgQNGaif7wN6y_lqbCdOSt7gCt4N9x4Y39IL8B7MMrYF-UHrJDgGFfQ5wcsWD0FSaeWrp_PbmuJtGD1sHFZM5s3fBfRryifjKqiI2zS0Jz-ThI3ihwx/s1600/2018-02-28+22.05.56.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijIQokv2rdVuZ83000p5wdiRiV0cgQNGaif7wN6y_lqbCdOSt7gCt4N9x4Y39IL8B7MMrYF-UHrJDgGFfQ5wcsWD0FSaeWrp_PbmuJtGD1sHFZM5s3fBfRryifjKqiI2zS0Jz-ThI3ihwx/s400/2018-02-28+22.05.56.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-19851477447458910962018-02-18T22:24:00.001-08:002018-02-18T22:24:21.684-08:00Singapore's Garden Extravaganza - with a focus on cloud forests<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLhC5EFxsy_axJwJJosQ7PWZy6RF8fuVplExwMLYZrsa02ed83ASIsFEMgJnjpKryU-Mp_iVKtduiBr2y435nwMsiMbdepjnV3phNi3RzLF4AeIpSjbXAZCvDb59kYPAfpn8tBkj8v0_-6/s1600/2018-02-10+07.14.09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLhC5EFxsy_axJwJJosQ7PWZy6RF8fuVplExwMLYZrsa02ed83ASIsFEMgJnjpKryU-Mp_iVKtduiBr2y435nwMsiMbdepjnV3phNi3RzLF4AeIpSjbXAZCvDb59kYPAfpn8tBkj8v0_-6/s400/2018-02-10+07.14.09.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
The last time I was in
Singapore which must have been getting on for ten years ago, <a href="http://www.gardensbythebay.com.sg/en.html" target="_blank">Gardens by the Bay</a> was under construction. The roads near the Marina were
lined by trees in enormous containers, making you feel as if you had
just driven into a garden centre or nursery that catered to giants.
All were destined for one of the world's largest and most ambitious
horticulture projects.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So, the first thing on
re-visiting, was to get down there and see how the project was doing.
The first impressions were very much that this was opulent public
horticulture, walking a path between well-funded amenity horticulture
and something more educational, but without any pretence at it being
a botanical garden. Spectacular constructions, such as the signature
'super trees' and huge scale plantings make a powerful impact, but
don't help define quite what the garden is for, other than impressing
the visitor. Public gardens have often had this role. In trying to
make sense of this extremely large, very well-funded and ambitious
project it helps to think back to the Victorian era.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5z635layA2g75tdoY21LXjxGOKRXChaggZpJPwhCCzpH6cE-JLrxdmug8Mnl7msEQFR-nSWwqG9JlSXia9273cnKLBJSCm9Q8EPG9ULd8mzg2nPgwNvP0u6p5slqyqNW3QQ7QgYavjQeW/s1600/2018-02-10+12.14.21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5z635layA2g75tdoY21LXjxGOKRXChaggZpJPwhCCzpH6cE-JLrxdmug8Mnl7msEQFR-nSWwqG9JlSXia9273cnKLBJSCm9Q8EPG9ULd8mzg2nPgwNvP0u6p5slqyqNW3QQ7QgYavjQeW/s400/2018-02-10+12.14.21.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the Supertrees</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In that golden age of
gardening, public parks were about municipal pride, and declaring the
status of the city or community that funded them. Not much chance of
that happening in today's Britain, the most centrally-controlled
country in Europe, where local government is so squeezed by the
politics of austerity that basic services are beginning to break
down. Singapore, like other successful Asian economies, are in a
similar situation to where we were in the Victorian era. With its
reputation as a garden city (an inheritance from the British Empire)
and the world's leading centre for urban greening, the use of gardens
as a national icon seems natural.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYrpYofar0mcon3PIYLGfzbwCtzagw6CYUdez1m6uGFN-B70E0SK_OlQwhis98Zt8qvs31C-S5Laix3jQTpyRJWr0wybgtJptzWnmpek0WbVwuCc_w19yAyDi1OXpklPu-4YgvS5iEzveh/s1600/2018-02-10+12.10.12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1500" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYrpYofar0mcon3PIYLGfzbwCtzagw6CYUdez1m6uGFN-B70E0SK_OlQwhis98Zt8qvs31C-S5Laix3jQTpyRJWr0wybgtJptzWnmpek0WbVwuCc_w19yAyDi1OXpklPu-4YgvS5iEzveh/s400/2018-02-10+12.10.12.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These are dogs, since you ask. It is the Chinese Year of the Dog this year.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The scale and level of
control is all a bit overwhelming. The control is again, very
Victorian, and likewise dependent on cheap labour (mostly south
Indian Tamils). It is also very Chinese. Singapore is the ultimate
state run on Confucian lines. “We think of the government as being
like our parents” says a Chinese friend (and no particular fan of
her government in Beijing and in fact having deep personal reasons
for thinking quite the opposite). 'Planning' and maintaining control
have been key to the city-state's (amazing) success as an economy.
Nice tidy public gardening on a mega scale is all part and parcel of
a paternalistic state which wants its citizens to enjoy their spare
time in suitably safe and unthreatening ways. Its not somewhere where
many western liberals would like to live, but it's the only place I
have been where multi-lingual poster campaigns invite people to grass
up their employers if they face unsafe working practices.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNuGbD7wzqdlEWwjzlOTcWAm8pNFi1aC_Zt1_RRnQcnN66SVdi9Nnwr8rmatTpYApBZ_25sWCtXiCobQYHNLnEJSs7Aspg4eXhdBXnZkhyphenhyphenKfBPQzu7FepSvqhvCJdGq8biDotaj1xWfHAG/s1600/2018-02-10+07.25.34.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNuGbD7wzqdlEWwjzlOTcWAm8pNFi1aC_Zt1_RRnQcnN66SVdi9Nnwr8rmatTpYApBZ_25sWCtXiCobQYHNLnEJSs7Aspg4eXhdBXnZkhyphenhyphenKfBPQzu7FepSvqhvCJdGq8biDotaj1xWfHAG/s400/2018-02-10+07.25.34.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See those little figures down in the bottom right? They give you some idea of the scale.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Possibly inspired by,
or aiming to go beyond, Cornwall's Eden Project, there are two vast
'greenhouses', kept cool rather than warm, using a clever
heat-exchange system powered by decaying compost. We went into the
Mediterranean one first. Here there are some good displays based on
the various Mediterranean climate zones around the world, and good
interpretation. Trouble is, someone's been unable to stop themselves
having a go at some of the shrubs with their hedgetrimmer. There's a
terribly kitschy faux-Chinese garden, planted with loads of
forced-looking dahlias.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv_KnJaU8Q5uYBNVabktLzSQWB-hiOJhM6FAbfZsipWg8YlT5HCz-yYrXjq1-WbC8ZSCR8e3kXnZkdg6ZSc6H5ivtFcOj57dUtf68cQL3DKZmz13T9f3cQl5TVWmvOalh15xJibu6lwOV9/s1600/2018-02-10+07.18.23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv_KnJaU8Q5uYBNVabktLzSQWB-hiOJhM6FAbfZsipWg8YlT5HCz-yYrXjq1-WbC8ZSCR8e3kXnZkdg6ZSc6H5ivtFcOj57dUtf68cQL3DKZmz13T9f3cQl5TVWmvOalh15xJibu6lwOV9/s400/2018-02-10+07.18.23.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And then, the other
'biome'. Something completely different. Dedicated to cloud forests,
this is the most sustained, visionary, high-investment naturalistic
planting extravaganza ever. One of those things that gives one real
hope. I'm assuming most readers will know what a cloud forest is, but
for those who don't it is a mountain region that gets very high
precipitation, much of it from being in the clouds. Cloud forests are
biodiversity hotspots, often with very high rates of evolution, as
every mountain side and valley will have slightly different
conditions and the physical fragmentation of the territory allows for
isolation and evolution. Think orchids, bromeliads, vireya
rhododendrons, tropical begonias. The Gardens by the Bay Cloud Forest
biome sends its visitors up in a lift to descend on a vertiginous
series of aerial walkways around an artificial mountain covered in
plants growing practically vertically.Vertical planting has had a bit of a chequered career in the temperate zone, but here, in a cloud forest zone (real or artificial) a lot of species grow like this naturally.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjneJzMBJllou1fKr2_yAL3gaY-qkmoIOecuroR84X9yclntVrAnocc2jyNIMhZrSXdqVw5g0c3ZrT4SWB9_b2S7vdZ0iAqRC8h9LiA1-ssWvU3Xf1nPgzrih7Qf62azqKJPHBN1TzbtwDP/s1600/2018-02-10+07.27.33.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjneJzMBJllou1fKr2_yAL3gaY-qkmoIOecuroR84X9yclntVrAnocc2jyNIMhZrSXdqVw5g0c3ZrT4SWB9_b2S7vdZ0iAqRC8h9LiA1-ssWvU3Xf1nPgzrih7Qf62azqKJPHBN1TzbtwDP/s400/2018-02-10+07.27.33.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The standard of
everything is just so high, the interpretation spot-on, with firm and
imaginatively-driven messages on conservation and climate change.
Given that we are entering the Chinese century, it is really
encouraging to see such conservation leadership coming from within
the Chinese language community.
</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbTHXZgQ7luacs9LWCYdq3jk69E2u8q-1AL367d0GJ1B2RRTcgit-Jy4lNg4ldBBvOzv4i7HN1tyVaWcJhBWoxn7rI1YxAQK1JK9MG9dUz-Zud8weR-_WJRK0vnvKPjV-Do61MucQgq3ED/s1600/2018-02-10+07.39.11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbTHXZgQ7luacs9LWCYdq3jk69E2u8q-1AL367d0GJ1B2RRTcgit-Jy4lNg4ldBBvOzv4i7HN1tyVaWcJhBWoxn7rI1YxAQK1JK9MG9dUz-Zud8weR-_WJRK0vnvKPjV-Do61MucQgq3ED/s400/2018-02-10+07.39.11.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBx_l96JDKOWFbEVocRZVXN6hq2QwkxD_89lMEKtS7Znl2seOtr8XSjc2kqMfmCvTauPRbh8KsRKlJoFh1NhWRYe-3yUdpqEq5esTu0xDrft9mtgsIBearn6iSABmlCNZxi0MDPmoD7HpZ/s1600/2018-02-10+07.33.06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBx_l96JDKOWFbEVocRZVXN6hq2QwkxD_89lMEKtS7Znl2seOtr8XSjc2kqMfmCvTauPRbh8KsRKlJoFh1NhWRYe-3yUdpqEq5esTu0xDrft9mtgsIBearn6iSABmlCNZxi0MDPmoD7HpZ/s400/2018-02-10+07.33.06.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lycopodium and Huperzia species, club mosses - fern relatives. Having such botanical curiosities shows just how serious they are here about their plant diversity.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
</div>
Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-70982546032093555962018-02-08T04:26:00.000-08:002018-02-08T04:26:03.983-08:00House Plants are back!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
After many years of
being seriously uncool, house plants seem to be back in fashion. My
son, more in tune with the zeitgeist than I (after all he lives in
Clapton in east London – Clapton-the-new-Brooklyn (but hasten to
add is NOT a bearded hipster) has started to pack his windowsills. A
few trendy looking books have started to appear as well, usually in
furnishings and accessories outlets that don't generally sell books,
which is always a sign that something is 'on trend'. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I have long been
puzzled by the lack of interest in house plants, particularly amongst
dedicated gardeners. So many really good plantspeople seem to suspend
all interest once they step inside the house. I am always slightly
surprised that a lot of good gardeners and plantspeople don't grow
their own veg, but then not everyone is a foodie and growing things
to eat is very time-consuming and requires a lot of organisation, so
I more or less understand that; to turn from weeding the Arisaemas to
nipping down to the local supermarket to busy some packeted veg. is
understandable. But not to grow anything inside? I am genuinely
puzzled.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
For myself, and I
think for quite a few gardeners who started in their teenage years,
the first plants we grew were indoor ones. Tropical stuff, cacti,
orchids, insectivorous things, kinda adolescent slightly nerdy
things. Most of us then soon moved outside, but the love of plants on
windowsills or atop cupboards has never left some of us. </div>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Those who started as
'outside gardeners' don't often seem to be able to make the
transition to keeping plants inside. One reason might be the sheer
artificiality of keeping plants growing in what is, after all, a very
alien environment. The quality of growth that it is possible to get
from plants growing in the ground is so much more difficult to
achieve from indoor plants. House plants are incredibly dependent on
their owners and keepers for their most basic needs. Many plants also
respond to seasonal changes, primarily to temperature, and since we
humans seem happy only if we are kept at around 21<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">ºC
that limits possibilities. </span>Small failures build up, and if
things go slightly wrong, we are then stuck with a below-par plant
which given the shortage of spaces to grow plants in most houses, is
always on view. We are then constantly confronted with evidence of
our own failure as gardeners in other words (and the horti-social
embarassment).</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The hard fact is that
there are not very many plants which grow well inside. Light levels
are generally too low; dry air is also often a factor that affects
plants badly. Succulents do well, but only if they have really good
light – so unless you have extensive sunny windowsills there is not
much habitat for them. The range of houseplants which was developed
during the 1960s, the high point of house plant history, was a pretty
limited one. Essentially it built on what I call the 'aspidistra
concept', the very idea being one which has been one of the factors
which has limited interest in them over the years anyway. It was the
Victorians who really were the pioneers in growing house plants,
despite the fact that their homes were infamously dark, with big
extremes of temperature and polluted (coal smoke pollution inside and
out was horrendous in the 19<sup>th</sup> and much of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century, making today's worries over diesel exhaust seem almost like
minor niggles). </div>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Aspidistras survived
the grim growing conditions of the Victorian home, along with a
limited range of other, it-has-to-be-faced, rather dull plants. They
grow incredibly slowly, with very long-lived leaves. They are as near
to static and plastic as plants can be. The aspidistra is a plant of
deep shade, where resource inputs are low, so it grows immensely
slowly. Ivy (Hedera helix) will survive similar conditions, and of
course if conditions are right, can move pretty fast, but if poor can
just survive, for years; not surprisingly it too was common in the
Victorian home. Much of the 1960s house plants were visually more
exciting but in many ways not much better, many being tropical forest
floor plants – happy at 'our' temperatures, but able to survive for
long periods without growing much: Philodendron, Monstera,
Aglaeomena, Anthurium – all tropical Araceae. If they do start to
grow their new growth is often weak and unattractive. They are not
really living plants, in the sense of something which grows and
develops.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I did do a house plant
book once – a long time ago. Unfortunately all packed up, which
given my current peripatetic status is going to be the story of my
life for some time from now on. So I can't share pictures, but will
try to do so in a future blog. In researching the book, we did find a
few people who had examples of the kind of plants I have been just
discussing, but which had been cared for well and had actually grown
pretty spectacularly. There was a Rhoicissus which had colonised the
hallway of a substantial north London house (actually part of the
family) and an enormous Swiss cheese plant (Monstera deliciosa) in a
Liverpool sitting room (ditto, belonging to the late Tony Bradshaw,
the botanist and ecologist). </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhetstJLimZmLlLaZIyr-R8jsTAIzIgrXO8td7CmVettpwcG0gTgIkoJnvGgK2KjFXxZtneVzo4CbwxDPqnGvahj3Y5JgUDzEIFQDFZ6NCafJ7ycz-tb38mf_gZ6g1pYvSQsaVjp_NpzcNC/s1600/DSC_0118+copy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1072" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhetstJLimZmLlLaZIyr-R8jsTAIzIgrXO8td7CmVettpwcG0gTgIkoJnvGgK2KjFXxZtneVzo4CbwxDPqnGvahj3Y5JgUDzEIFQDFZ6NCafJ7ycz-tb38mf_gZ6g1pYvSQsaVjp_NpzcNC/s400/DSC_0118+copy.JPG" width="267" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The static nature of
much of the conventional house plants flora must be one of the main
reasons as to why few 'real gardeners' can be bothered with them.
Plants which grow more vigorously, in particular those which flower,
generally need more light than we can give them, or many of them. An
exception might be orchids, which are relatively common as house
plants now, all but unknown as such forty years ago. And of course,
gesneriads: Streptocarpus, African violets, Achimenes. Small,
relatively quite fast growing, not needing too much light (good
indirect is best) and often usefully dormant for part of the year,
gesneriads are an amazingly diverse and fascinating family. Their
slightly hairy foliage and compact size give them a sort of cuddly,
teddy bear quality too. When I'm in my dotage, I shall surround
myself with them in the old folks home.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Our houses are
actually very badly designed for plants – another problem facing
the 'home' gardener. There were some attempts in the 1950s and 1960s
in Sweden, a period and a place for particularly bold re-thinking of
the domestic environment to create houses with small integrated
growing spaces. The only one I have ever actually seen was, I think,
at Beth Chatto's, a modernist 1960s design. I have often had the
fantasy of designing a house around growing spaces for plants: light
in just the right places at just the right amount, small planting
beds strategically placed. There is a disadvantage perhaps to having
too much vegetation around: the dead leaves, flowers, occasional
insect pests, all add to a confusion of housework and gardening. I
suspect it was this dislike of 'mess' which so restricted the use of
plants in the conservatories of the 1980s conservatory boom.
Victorians loved conservatories but had lots of cheap labour in the
form of servants to attend to the cleaning, picking up and primping. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So, its good to see
house plants as 'back' but I can't help feel that we could do so much
more.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Thanks to my son,
Kieran Bradshaw. for the pictures.</div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-34344902898319096342018-02-03T10:17:00.001-08:002018-02-03T10:20:33.811-08:00Portugal's firestorm disaster - eucalyptus to blame<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaswT2uLQuFsOWBmliiKGu8bzrzuVXsyQ4TzU7vbHQ_ERIGVIBsUsWHsN-O2exqntKaAzY_qhoAZhrHgvlPiWpfcTbZhjjd-ORing4pirl8CSvJl5EhY8PaqLOJszqST9mS0FECjcHE9Qi/s1600/2018-01-23+11.32.54+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaswT2uLQuFsOWBmliiKGu8bzrzuVXsyQ4TzU7vbHQ_ERIGVIBsUsWHsN-O2exqntKaAzY_qhoAZhrHgvlPiWpfcTbZhjjd-ORing4pirl8CSvJl5EhY8PaqLOJszqST9mS0FECjcHE9Qi/s400/2018-01-23+11.32.54+copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the old manor house which Jo's daughter and family were thinking of buying, but the estate agent hadn't updated the pictures.</td></tr>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There was a day last
year, October the 15<sup>th</sup>, when the sky over southern Britain
turned an apocalyptic orange – we knew that the remnants of a
hurricane, Ophelia, was about to hit us, but it was not until later
on that we learnt that the extraordinary light conditions were the
result of soot from fires in Spain and Portugal. Forest fires on a
massive, and so far unprecedented scale for Europe. Having just spent
a couple of weeks in the affected area, and concerned that there has
been very little publicity about what happened outside the region, I
want to say something about the issue here.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There had already been
severe fires in Portugal in June, and a blog posting of mine then had
discussed them in terms of them being largely the result of extensive
eucalyptus planting. The conditions in October were exceptional:
Ophelia was the most easterly tracking hurricane ever, big storms
rarely go that far south, and the region was tinder-dry after many
months without rain. All of these are indicators of a possible
outcome of climate change.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Words cannot even begin
to describe the scale of devastation, which has had nothing like the
international press coverage it deserves. It looks as if someone has
taken a flame-gun to the countryside. It is possible to drive for
several hours across central Portugal and nearly every area of forest
or trees in villages or in farmland have been burnt. Many houses too,
especially the rather splendid big old abandoned houses which this
country of large-scale rural depopulation is littered with. Some
factories and warehouses too. Parts of the country are like a war
zone. The Avo valley, a steep river valley, once very picturesque
despite the ever-present eucalyptus is now a blackened ruin of a
landscape. All in all, a terrifying presage of what might become much
more common with climate change.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvkx-3C0GsbJOFDGM3WhxkvWPb56d11xQkEAbxGBEg6j7BtS5ylH77hbQdw4qjH7TE7VGLtdTwSbu0THLvzx3Ave7hu1wvc3u6wstCOEql4wrCAGRbeCHyIxOr3N6QXiTaIQdp4tqflTjM/s1600/burnt+woodland+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvkx-3C0GsbJOFDGM3WhxkvWPb56d11xQkEAbxGBEg6j7BtS5ylH77hbQdw4qjH7TE7VGLtdTwSbu0THLvzx3Ave7hu1wvc3u6wstCOEql4wrCAGRbeCHyIxOr3N6QXiTaIQdp4tqflTjM/s400/burnt+woodland+copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Eucalyptus acted as a
vector for the fires spreading them into areas of pine (also
relatively inflammable) and other areas of woodland. There is very
little deciduous woodland left in central or northern Portugal, and
oddly a lot of oaks loo relatively damaged. Deciduous trees like oaks
and chestnuts are not so inflammable. Indeed where there is deciduous
woodland, it seems as if the fire has not penetrated.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Fire is an important
part of ecologies in many regions and the idea that it is always bad
and damaging is now rejected. Understanding it is vitally important
as to how we manage landscapes and indeed plant gardens.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are many
'fire-resistant' trees. Eucalyptus however the opposite, as they
appear to deliberately court fire. This is what makes them so
dangerous. I'll try to explain.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhf5wTUhX0hSGb7oigWqPYoMD9bfVGYXUcdxOCHeDliYtWI0cHlNufZ8G8gu8EP3-1_O51Tyfn1e-_AE59pp3IKz4bzDnmanhFscKkvg0ZZGLZjhJcKgrKKX-5a2T02IBKc_DHj2ol0lZQ/s1600/Eucalypts+in+PT+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhf5wTUhX0hSGb7oigWqPYoMD9bfVGYXUcdxOCHeDliYtWI0cHlNufZ8G8gu8EP3-1_O51Tyfn1e-_AE59pp3IKz4bzDnmanhFscKkvg0ZZGLZjhJcKgrKKX-5a2T02IBKc_DHj2ol0lZQ/s400/Eucalypts+in+PT+copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Think of Pinus pinea,
the umbrella-shaped Stone Pine of the Mediterranean – its shape is
obviously designed to keep the foliage canopy up and away from ground
fires. Cork oaks are similar, and of course have the amazing
fire-resistant bark which has long been one of Portugal's main
exports. Pinus palustris, the Longleaf Pine of the American South
does not have this shape but gets its foliage up from the ground very
quickly. This latter and its relationship with fire is now recognised
as having been fundamental to a vast swathe of land from North
Carolina around to the border with Texas (most was felled in the late
19<sup>th</sup> century to make way for slave-grown cotton). Longleaf
dominated its territory, but by leaving a big gap between the ground
and the canopy allowed ground fires to sweep across vast areas doing
little damage to the trees. The regularity of the fires ensured that
there was no build up of fuel – many of these fires were probably
like prairie fires, very superficial. They would however have damaged
many tree seedlings but left the better-adapted Longleaf seedlings.
However it enabled a very diverse grass and wildflower flora to
flourish.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I first heard about
Longleaf when I went to a lecture by Janis Ray at the university of
Athens, Georgia many years ago. I thoroughly recommend her <a href="https://milkweed.org/book/ecology-of-a-cracker-childhood" target="_blank">bio –'Ecology of a Cracker Childhood' </a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
and indeed anything
else about <a href="http://www.nfwf.org/longleaf/Pages/home.aspx" target="_blank">this remarkable tree that you can find.</a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Key to the survival of
all these species is to have small and frequent ground fires. This
makes canopy fires rare, and it these that do the really lethal
damage to mature trees. Pines do not survive, and generally only do
so through their seedlings taking off after a disastrous fire.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Eucalyptus however
seems to deliberately encourage canopy fire. Their bark peels off and
falls off in great strips, leaving a pile of what amounts to kindling
at the base of the tree, with some loose strips leading thoughtfully
up into the canopy of oil-soaked leaves. They are a recipe for the
smallest ground fire leading to an almost explosive canopy fire.
After which they recover, remarkably quickly. Sprouts can be seen
surprisingly far up blackened trees only months after burning. In
other words the trees' burning seems an evolutionary adaptation, that
knocks back other tree species and gives the eucalyptus a competitive
advantage. Just the same as with grasses, which burn easily, but
survive and flourish amongst more seriously damaged woody plant
seedlings. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To add insult to injury, young eucalyptus seem almost unaffected by the fire - presumably the canopy fires sweep over the top of them. I wonder too if the silver foliage they have is somehow fire-proof. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh75UCGDd7AebHFq9X31jomPa3GTWYe6NbxMmGj4ylLaud1TbUYWtJy5CC-FaJMbR9reBfWQlEs5wfVLXVIiGM81QCSsexdKZsZaFvEhO-YL-yJS2kXg_cmrx__oxuY2FirPpllyhatxP86/s1600/eucalypt+bark+shed+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1333" data-original-width="1001" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh75UCGDd7AebHFq9X31jomPa3GTWYe6NbxMmGj4ylLaud1TbUYWtJy5CC-FaJMbR9reBfWQlEs5wfVLXVIiGM81QCSsexdKZsZaFvEhO-YL-yJS2kXg_cmrx__oxuY2FirPpllyhatxP86/s400/eucalypt+bark+shed+copy.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I wrote about the
origins of the <a href="http://noels-garden.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/eucalyptus-and-mimosa-portugals.html" target="_blank">Portuguese eucalyptus problem in this posting.</a> Only
to add that I have since found out that Portugal was massively
deforested in the 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup> century
by a combination of overpopulation and traditional agriculture
linked to a failure to industrialise. Zillions of sheep and goats
roaming the hills eating tree seedlings apparently. That linking of
population issues with unadaptive agriculture and failure to develop
sounds like today's Haiti or Rwanda. That's another story.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Find out more about the
battle against <a href="http://www.quercus.pt/documentos-floresta/2955-manifesto-da-quercus-pela-florestas" target="_blank">Eucalyptus in Portugal here.</a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
and about <a href="https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2018/02/01/eucalyptus-how-californias-most-hated-tree-took-root-2/" target="_blank">similar issues in California here:</a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-55312009255850093642018-01-22T13:23:00.001-08:002018-01-22T13:46:22.254-08:00Transplanting myself, or is it uprooting?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }</style>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkHK86874MrhwJDeukTHdsJURovW33AT9MJ1MYf18AWyv3yQ6kQC9occm_gPRdM6yzewfxlsmqmsLfn5tEW12P9xL3TlX0uiV8vbzE_425nRM8sf9FNklvb8ymKDXehpy3AAjYbj1giM8u/s1600/2017-09-15+08.38.36+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1064" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkHK86874MrhwJDeukTHdsJURovW33AT9MJ1MYf18AWyv3yQ6kQC9occm_gPRdM6yzewfxlsmqmsLfn5tEW12P9xL3TlX0uiV8vbzE_425nRM8sf9FNklvb8ymKDXehpy3AAjYbj1giM8u/s400/2017-09-15+08.38.36+copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the last pictures I took at Montpelier Cottage. Late September.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“I felt so shocked<span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "arialmt"; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"> I shut the computer right away and could not get over the news </span>” wrote a friend when she read my email
telling her that we were planning to move. It has of course been a
very difficult decision, p</span>erhaps the most difficult of my life. So
many people who come to visit or stay remark how lovely it is, not
the garden so much as the setting (a shallow valley, with woods on
one side and no sign of human habitation) or if they mean the garden
it is clear that they mean it in its rural setting. “Paradise” is
the word often used. So how can we bear to leave?</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Paradise of course is
precisely that, a non-earthly place, where the garden-of-Eden
maintenance was presumably done by angels, or some of the clouds of
cherubs which infest Baroque churches. Earthly paradises are hard
work. People have often wondered at how I have been able to juggle my
varied, disparate and complex workload and garden. The answer is that
I have been increasingly unable to; we have had a wonderful
one-day-a-week gardener, Diana Sessarego, but I really needed more of
her time to really achieve what I wanted, or someone else's, and we
couldn't afford that.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Back last June, <a href="http://noels-garden.blogspot.pt/2017/06/p-margin-bottom-0.html" target="_blank">I wrote a blog post </a>which
flagged up our moving plans. We have now made the painful wrench,
renting the house to a friend until we decide what to do. We are in
for a year of travelling - a trip to New Zealand and Australia,
culminating in my doing a presentation for the biennial Australian
landscape conference. The rest of the year, I will be in Portugal for
much of the time, which indeed is where I am writing this. As flagged
up in June, we are seriously considering moving ourselves here.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Life, and parties
are best left too early than too late” is something that I read
recently. I would add gardens. In my career of garden journalism, I
have all too often visited gardens where the owners have clearly been
unable to manage what they originally set out, or had simply
over-extended themselves. I have usually found these quite depressing
places. Reality unable to match the dream. Only rarely do gardens
manage a dignified retreat. In truth, given my main focus being the
naturalistic, I could probably do just this, and find it a very
interesting and satisfying process. But I, or I should say we to include Jo,
do not want to.
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I am in many ways an
experimental gardener, interested in how plants work, and work
together. Once a certain point has been reached, things begin to
plateau out: I feel as if I am learning less every year. I'd like to
move on to new things. And new plants of course; there is always the
plantsman-thrill of trying new plants and there is nothing like being
in a new place for having to try new plants simply because of it
being a different environment. At a time of changing climates and
weird weather, it is important to learn more about drought,
resilience to extremes, heat tolerance. Which is part of the thinking
about spending some time in a Mediterranean climate.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
We've had friends
round to dig plants up, particularly rarer varieties which I worry
may be lost to commercial cultivation, apart from it just being nice
to share plants. I've also been able to distribute plants for some
research plots, versions of the plots I have had for the last seven
years and which have been a great way to trial plant combinations and
learn more about how plants survive and interact over time. That has
been a very positive outcome of moving, and the idea of trying to
recruit other gardeners into running trial plots as a way of
documenting what we learn about plants is something which I think I
may well devote quite a bit of time to over the next few years.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Another reason for
moving, or even forcing myself to move, is that staying in one place
is actually quite limiting. One tries to grow Dicentra a few times,
they fail every time, conclude that the soil is unsuitable and that's
it, you don't try them again, so we never get to enjoy <i>Dicentra</i> or
learn any more about it. <i>Geranium endressii</i> and its pink pals all
grow like crazy in Herefordshire, that for me is 'the normal', and
so much gardening has to revolve around how to manage or make the
most of these plants; that they may not do so well elsewhere becomes
a rather alien concept – but that will be the norm for others.
Gardeners have traditionally very much been people who have stayed in
one place, but as someone who has become a globally-orientated
teacher of gardening and related skills, staying in one place has
become to seem dangerously limiting. One of the biggest problems in
garden writing I think has been the assumption that because it works
for me, it must work for everybody, so that's what I'm going to
recommend, and drone on about it all the magazine articles and books
I write. This way we do not learn but spread self-centred myths.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There is something to
be said for getting down on hands and knees in lots of other peoples'
gardens, appreciating how plants grow in many different places rather
than endlessly in one's own. It sounds like I am arguing for a future
rather peripatetic existence of poking around other peoples' gardens.
For how long I would actually do this before succumbing to the
inevitable temptation of wanting my own plot again I don't know. I
suspect probably not that long. We shall just have to see.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
* * * * * * * * * * * </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I shall be back in England in September, leading <span style="font-size: large;">a tour of Devon gardens</span>. If you are potentially interested do drop me an email on: noelk57@gmail.com</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-29518671284023554732017-11-27T03:20:00.001-08:002017-11-27T03:20:29.813-08:00Gardening - explaining a British national obsession?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Back in the summer I received a surprise email, from the <a href="https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/albion/10-oct-2017-24-nov-2017" target="_blank">Almeida Theatre</a> in London, who were staging a play - Albion, in which a garden plays a crucial role. As part of the background to the play, they commissioned me to write a piece for the programme about gardens, as an introduction to people, many of them from overseas, to the whole history of British gardens as part of our national identity. I'm reprinting it here, for the benefit of a non-British audience.<br />
See the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/oct/18/albion-review-mike-bartlett-almeida-london" target="_blank">review of the play here.</a><br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; </style><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Gardening is very
important to the British. It has also a big part of how the rest of
the world sees us. Gardening is not just popular as a practical
hobby, but also in the form of 'garden visiting', a form of leisure
activity which is all but unknown elsewhere. This refers not so much
to visiting historical gardens, but to visiting contemporary private
ones. One measure of this is the scale of the National Garden Scheme,
which this year oversaw the opening of around 3,700 private gardens,
the ticket money going to charity. Originally an act of noblesse
oblige on the part of the rural gentry, garden opening is now an
activity which involves the owners of small and town gardens as well.
Visiting other people's gardens gives keen gardeners ideas and
something to measure their own efforts against, although to be honest
the activity also satisfies a deep sense of curiosity, giving people
the chance to, ever so politely, snoop on other peoples' lives. </span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> Gardening in Britain
has many varied, and deep, roots. The first explanation is perhaps
that these isles on Europe's north Atlantic shore are a very good
place to grow things. With a mild climate and rainfall distributed
year round, the growing season is long. Plants from a great many
lands and climate zones can be grown together, to the extent that
gardening visitors from harsher climates are often astonished at
seeing juxtapositions in British gardens that would impossible for
them at home. This bringing together of the world's floras gives us
another insight into the origin's of Britain's gardening obsession.
Several centuries of being an imperial power saw plant hunters set of
with the explorers, the missionaries, the traders and the plunderers
who were all a part of the story of empire. Indeed quite often the
role of plant hunter was combined with one or more of these other
roles.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> Wave after wave of
trees, shrubs and perennials arrived on British shores, sometimes
first coming to botanical gardens, such as that established at Kew ,
but more likely in the nurseries that supplied the gardens and
greenhouses of the aristocracy. At first the playthings of the
wealthy, the very ease with which many plants can be propagated, from
seeds, cuttings or simply digging a plant up and splitting it, meant
that new introductions could very rapidly find their way down the
social scale. A novelty in His Lordship's garden would very quickly
be propagated, at first to provide gifts for other gardening members
of 'society', but then later as gifts from one head gardener to
another, and then to the head gardener's family, and then the mother
of the girl the under-gardener had his eye on, and so on through the
village. Nurseries catered for the rising middle classes, while even
the urban poor could grow geraniums on their windowsills. </span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> Whilst one great arm
of British gardening has been about plants, another has been about
landscape and garden design. Indeed it might be said that perhaps
Britain's greatest contribution to world culture has been the
landscape movement of the 18<sup>th</sup> century. Until then gardens
in Europe had been firmly formal and geometric. British landowners
however made a break with this tradition, ripping out mile upon mile
of clipped hedges, tearing out intricate parterres and inserting
bends and curves into formerly straight ponds. The landscape around
the country house was made to look as unmanaged as possible, with
artfully arranged clumps of trees amidst acres of grass, usually
grazed by cattle or sheep. The new landscape was on the one hand
rational (the grazing animals produced an income) but at the same
time an artistic celebration of a supposedly 'natural' landscape.
This was no mere practical movement, but a philosophical one as well,
with garden making being earnestly discussed in journals, coffee
houses and London clubs.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> Later developments may
have brought back the formal garden in many different guises, but the
naturalistic curves and contours of the landscape movement never
really went away. A tension between the love of the formal and
ordered and the informal and supposedly natural has remained ever
since. The 1890s saw this explode into a long-running dispute between
two prominent garden makers and commentators, the
architecturally-trained Sir Reginald Blomfield and the irascible
gardening journalist William Robinson, whose views can be guessed
from the title of his 1871 book, <i>The Wild Garden</i>. Both laid
claim to their vision of gardens as exemplifying Britishness,
Blomfield that terraces, allées and topiary expressed the country's
architectural tradition, Robinson that sensitivity to nature, to
local landscape and wildflowers was more important. Ultimately
however it was a turf war between professions: architects versus
horticulturalists. </span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> Another great dispute
lay at the heart of the golden age of British gardening, the
Victorian era. More than anything this was dominated by a passion for
exotica on the part of those wealthy enough to afford greenhouses,
the men to manage them, and the coal to fire the boilers to keep them
warm. The collecting and display of exotic plants, orchids in
particular, became something of a national obsession during the
latter half of the 19<sup>th</sup> century. Fortunes would be spent
on rare plants and elaborate glasshouses in which to display them.
Members of the aristocracy and the new industrial elite vied with
each other to build the finest collections of plants. For the general
public there was a spin-off, as city parks departments would lay out
elaborate plantings for the summer, mostly using warm-climate plants
reared in greenhouses.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> However a reaction set
in by the end of the century. Just as the Arts and Crafts movement
questioned the new industrial society, so many gardeners began to
react against the artificiality and exoticism of sub-tropical summer
planting reared in hothouses, instead promoting the supposedly simple
plants grown by country people, hardy annuals and herbs which could
be sown out of doors in spring and perennials which came back year
after year with no effort. Thus was born the cottage garden movement
and a whole new phase of garden making. In many ways this became the
core of the British garden ideal. Images of country gardens, often
featuring colourful flowers against a backdrop of clipped hedges and
topiary (which had now made a come-back) were reproduced in the books
and magazines and on the packaging of the merchandise that bound the
empire's far-flung servants to a particular sense of what it meant to
be British.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">
</span><div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;"> During the early 20<sup>th</sup>
century, a great final phase of plant hunting brought hardy plants
rather than exotica to British gardens, as the incredible
bio-diversity of the Sino-Himalayan region's rhododendrons, magnolias
and camellias were discovered and brought home, again primarily to
the estates of the elite. In the end though something more important
happened - a healing of the formal-informal rift. Garden makers began
to bring together cottage garden insouciance with clipped geometry.
Gardens such as Hidcote in Gloucestershire (actually made by an
Anglophile American) and Sissinghurst in Sussex (created by the
aristocratic duo of Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West) used
frameworks of hedges to contain exuberant perennials and annuals;
voluptuous abundance balanced with ascetic discipline. This Arts and
Crafts garden style dominates the most popular British gardens, and
has been widely emulated internationally, its intimacy, order and
sense of historical roots proving an immensely satisfying and
pleasurable part of the national psyche.</span></div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-91866361303520343202017-10-27T05:53:00.000-07:002017-10-27T05:53:08.285-07:00Overwhelmed by garden books?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Books.</div>
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Many gardeners
accumulate as many books as they do plant species. Now that we are
moving, I face the problem of culling an extensive library that has
not had a serious edit since we came to this part of Herefordshire
twelve years ago. It is an interesting exercise, sometimes difficult,
sometimes painful, but strangely cathartic. And it makes me ponder on
the relationship between books, gardening and gardeners.<br />
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I am sure gardeners
write more, read more, and accumulate more books than other hobbyists
or semi-professional activities. Whereas most beekeepers,
dog-breeders, potters and embroiderers probably have a good shelf or
two, I don't think they have the
multiple-shelf-verging-onto-libraries that many gardeners have. Why
is this?<br />
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Partly I suppose it's
because modern gardening has a great deal to do with information.
Whereas the traditional core of gardening is a craft set of skills
and intuitive abilities, the kind of gardening we indulge in (if
hobbyists) or profess (if well.... professionals) is both an art and
a science. The former implies constant change and the expression of
different and often rival ideas, and the latter the access to hard
data. We want to know what Dan Pearson thinks of <i>Veronicastrum
virginicum</i> as well as what conditions the Veronicastrum likes to
grow in (we do not however have so great an interest in what
conditions Dan Pearson likes to live in – there is no 'Hello'
magazine of the garden world and I am not sure there is even a
functioning gossip column anywhere).<br />
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Gardeners, and their
surprisingly modern colleagues - garden designers, are also great
writers and communicators. More so than those of many other fields of
human endeavour. There seems to be a strong urge to share and
broadcast ideas, knowledge and opinions. Gardening is after all a
surprisingly social business. The plantsman always seeks the new, and
this is usually gained through some interaction with others: the
garden visit, the club meeting, or a nursery fair. Transmitting ideas
through print (or its modern digital equivalent) is the next most
obvious thing.<br />
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Gardening and garden
design are lucky in that they do seem to attract people who actually
like writing and do it well. Communicating ideas in print does seem
to be a real expectation at a particular point in someone's career.
The result is an awful lot of books. The garden book has become a
genre in itself, and one that has benefited enormously from all the
technological advances in printing technology and colour photography
of the last few decades.
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Inevitably the books
accumulate which raises the question – when you are getting ready
to move, as we are. What do you keep? and what do you give away or
sell second-hand? Books are heavy, gardening books particularly so,
because of all that china clay smeared over the paper to create a
nice photo-friendly gloss. You don't want to be carting too many of
them up and down stairs, into and out of vans, etc. Starting with
reference books, I find I'm hardly getting rid of any. The internet
has of course become the first point-of-reference but it has huge
limitations. Put in a plant name and very often it is nursery sites
which come up; it can be very difficult to find more dispassionate
sources, or which tell you anything else about the plant. Websites
often just give bald data: height, flowering time, hardiness zone
etc., but none of the subjectivity and opinion that gives the text in
a book real character, and which is often far more useful in making
decisions about whether to grow something or not. Nothing online
comes anywhere near the dry wit of Henk Gerritssen in <i>Dream
Plants for the Natural Garden</i> or the measured aristocratic
snootiness of Graham Stuart Thomas in <i>Perennial Garden Plants, Or,
The Modern Florilegium: A Concise Account of Herbaceous Plants,
Including Bulbs, for General Garden Use. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Such
a wonderfully 18</span><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">th</span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;">
century title.</span></div>
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<span style="font-style: normal;">Books
about gardens or by designers are a different matter. So many are
inevitably in the much sneered-at 'coffee table' category. Publishers
also have a high turnover, so the same book concept basically gets published
every few years, with different authors and photographers. I
shall never forget a commissioning editor saying to me “we haven't
done a small gardens book for five years, its time we did another
one”, implication of “it's your turn”. The advances in colour
repro also mean that what may have looked stunning ten years ago, now
looks dated and fuzzy. A lot of writing about design is fuzzy too; there is little real hard analysis of why some designs work and others don't. Designers writing about their own work is often a disaster, they lack the perspective to 'stand outside their own work', to explain how it functions, let alone to look at it critically. As you may have guessed, an awful lot of these
end up on the 'go to second hand' pile. </span>
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<span style="font-style: normal;">Old
magazines are going out too. There is always the Lindley Library in
London to go through anyway. And increasingly, contents are available online, as with The Hardy Plant Society Journal </span><br />
<span style="font-style: normal;">How often do I refer back to the
carefully ordered copies of </span><i>The Garden</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
that took up nearly two metres on my shelves? Almost never. Out they
go. <i>Hortus</i>? </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Collective noun for a pile of Hortuses; the classicist might
suggest 'Horti', I would suggest a 'smug' - some very good writing in it, and far too nice to put out in the recycling, but always so oddly unchallenging and unquestioning - 'gardens of a golden afternoon' type complacency. So they are on ebay, unless someone wants to come and pick them up. Any offers? </span></div>
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<span style="font-style: normal;">In going through books I am reminded of some real gems, classics that stand out and in many cases, deserve to be better known: Andrew Lawson's <i>The Gardener's Book Of Colour</i>, <i>The Inward Garden </i>by Julie Moir Messervy (a psychological approach to garden design, quite unique) <i>Plant-Driven Design</i> by Lauren Springer and Scott Ogden. The common thread being a unique approach, a singular vision, stepping outside the box. When so much in garden publishing is so samey, such individuality is all the more important.</span></div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-32021631150598920172017-10-04T23:41:00.001-07:002017-10-05T01:12:02.356-07:00Voyages east and west - but new plants needed<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh15aqX2BjDh3fPmq1x0CWXHiNLXZduM8A_Q0PCSxiP7kBuFN2FDyWgeTvjM25VHeMw1fZosHSQEIJnbxmCnb7uY4h2g9_pNUylfcnVJMxilnUXYUPM6VBXyZCOSjgwF66m7CCb_2Rq5x2m/s1600/2017-08-28+20.05.35+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1125" data-original-width="1500" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh15aqX2BjDh3fPmq1x0CWXHiNLXZduM8A_Q0PCSxiP7kBuFN2FDyWgeTvjM25VHeMw1fZosHSQEIJnbxmCnb7uY4h2g9_pNUylfcnVJMxilnUXYUPM6VBXyZCOSjgwF66m7CCb_2Rq5x2m/s400/2017-08-28+20.05.35+copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Three year old street planting in Vilnius, Lithuania</td></tr>
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<a href="http://noels-garden.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/gardening-takes-off-in-baltics.html" target="_blank"> At home after some
very interesting travelling. I blogged before aboutLatvia and particularly Lithuania</a>. And then Poland, which
has a very organised wholesale nursery industry but no real
organisation for domestic gardening. Ten days or so at home and then
running a workshop in Italy for the Valfredda nursery near Bergamo.
Something of a culture shock. Actually that is the first time that I
have been asked to lecture or teach south or west of the Alps;
something I think which highlights the deep cultural divide in Europe
over attitudes to nature and its expression in naturalistic planting.
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Using perennials in
Italy is relatively new. There is a kind of obvious reason for this
in that Mediterranean climates, with their dry summers do not favour
the growth of plants which need summer moisture, as most perennials
do. Just before the lecture started, the presence of two Russian
students led me to musing about as a gardener how much more at home I
feel in Russia, which may have a very different climate to ours but
which at least allows the kind of plants I am familiar with to do
very well. Italy of course is at least as divided in gardening terms
as it is in every other way: regional cuisines, language and
political culture. It is only partly 'Mediterranean' - there are in
fact plenty of areas where the water table or moister microclimates,
or altitude, allow for good perennial growth. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-_D9cj3UZ7olsooP-W5_YQ4RduiedDgyQEpwyhvVw7oqnfGWonbjbbqKD5Y26lu5Ir7-CgwER2bbepMSkUd86v7c-AeQX6N66UL-KZdsPbmHMiNMcpdpWRzU3t3XIyu-MQxderQL1-x2h/s1600/2017-09-21+10.33.29+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1050" data-original-width="1400" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-_D9cj3UZ7olsooP-W5_YQ4RduiedDgyQEpwyhvVw7oqnfGWonbjbbqKD5Y26lu5Ir7-CgwER2bbepMSkUd86v7c-AeQX6N66UL-KZdsPbmHMiNMcpdpWRzU3t3XIyu-MQxderQL1-x2h/s400/2017-09-21+10.33.29+copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seven year old pot-grown Miscanthus at Valfredda</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Italian planting
design has tended to be very conservative, at least what you see
publicly, and garden design generally to be dominated by evergreen
shrubs, which after all, are the most ecologically appropriate plants
for much of the country. This is however, an incredibly
design-focussed culture, so it will be interesting to see what
happens to planting design here. Grasses at least seem to be making a
big impact in the little exhibition spaces around Bergamo which are
set up for the annual conference held here in September. On this
subject, it was interesting to see the enormous pots of grasses
dotted around the <a href="http://www.valfredda.it/" target="_blank">Valfredda nursery</a> – these are used for when the
company do exhibitions or trade shows. Some of the miscanthus or
panicum grown like this have been in the containers for five to seven
years. </div>
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The big divide in
European planting design does seem to be around the question of 'is
nature beautiful?'. I have always read about this from garden history
in terms of an attitude that dates back to the Renaissance, of nature
only being beautiful when shaped by the hand of Man (male gender,
capital letter), Man being the image of God (ditto!). How much of
this is down to Catholicism or Renaissance Humanism I don't know. The
other Europe: Germanic/Scandinavian/Slavic/Baltic has a love of
nature for its own sake which is quite different; always expressed
with an inappropriate definite article, as in “we love<i> the</i>
nature”, which further stresses its singularity and importance. I
suppose a cultural historian might put this down to a residual
paganism which gives untrammelled nature a value which it lacks
elsewhere. </div>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What about the
British? I hear you ask! My immediate answer is to reach up onto the
bookshelf to get out Keith Thomas's monumental study <i>Religion and the
Decline of Magic</i> of 1971, and think about re-reading it. My gut
reaction is that in many ways we are a sort of in-between: like our
language (German grammar and core vocabulary, plus Latin vocab)
something of a hybrid. The British love nature but we don't really
understand what it is, as a cultural landscape of fields and hedges
has long since replaced the real thing. Above all we have very little
woodland, and indeed sniff at dense forest as somehow 'germanic' and
therefore not to be trusted. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">students on the course at Valfredda</td></tr>
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Basically, I would
guess that the great wave of interest in perennials that kicked off
in northern Europe in the 1990s is finally reaching southern Europe
(see <a href="https://noels-garden.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/travels-in-iberia.html" target="_blank">a previous post</a>).
However up and over in eastern Europe the interest in perennials is
totally climate-appropriate in the way that it is not so in southern
Europe, the idea of naturalistic planting is immediately understood,
and – crucially, the economies of most of these countries are now
at a level whereby there is, increasingly, money for ornamental
private gardens and quality public planting. Some of the most
large-scale and best work seems to be happening in Russia, thanks to <a href="http://www.alphabetcity.ru/" target="_blank">Anna Andreyeva.</a> Lithuania
and Latvia show great promise, as I have flagged up before.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Italian nursery I
worked with – Valfredda, and the nurseries emerging in eastern
Europe (which mostly seem to be in Poland) currently offer a very
similar range of perennials to what we might expect in Britain or
Holland. There is a great danger that a successful roll out of these,
especially in public places, might lead to a boredom factor kicking
in. What is currently lacking appears to be R&D – developing
new varieties. New cultivars and hybrids developed which are
climate-appropriate will enable these emerging perennial markets to
improve their sustainability and to develop local character. More
important still will be collection from the wild. Italy has pretty
good biodiversity, as do Spain and Portugal, and the geographical and
climatic complexity of this whole region means there must be plenty
of garden-worthy species awaiting discovery, or distinct forms of
already established species. </div>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Eastern Europe can, in
theory call on the vastness of the Eurasian landmass for new hardy
species for cultivation. They will need to, as the geography
(predominantly flat) and geological history mean that there is little
local genetic differentiation amongst plant species, until you get
down as far south as Romania and Bulgaria, both still 'off the map'
in terms of gardening innovation. There is a problem though, and that
is that eastern Europe has so firmly set itself looking westwards,
away from the old tyrant to the east, that any thought of going plant
hunting in Russia or central Asia is a non-starter. An older
generation had Russian as a common language (something the
non-Russians could all moan about the Russians in) but a younger one
went wholesale for English around 1990 (my wife Jo was involved in
training English teachers in Slovakia in the early 1990s). East
European botanists and plantspeople may have been forbidden from
travelling west but the whole vast Soviet empire was open to them; it
was interesting a few weeks ago to hear Janis Ruksans, the Latvian
bulb expert, reminisce about looking for bulbs in Soviet central
Asia. Much as we are all glad for the political changes there is a
sadness in seeing this common scientific culture and language
disappear. Also sad to hear about is the personal divide between the
western-looking republics and Russia. I once suggested to an east
European colleague that she invite a certain Russian landscape
architect to speak (incidentally known for their liberal views), I
was told a firm “no, we're not ready for that yet”. But she's not
going to arrive in a tank!</div>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Serious planting
hunting and new introductions will almost inevitably depend on
Russian plantspeople and nurseries looking east and not just growing
western-developed species and cultivars, which they all seem to do at
the moment. I haven't heard of any Russian plant hunters yet – I
very much look forward to doing so. We would all greatly benefit. As
we would from some Italian ones.</div>
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-20389790011282060032017-09-06T12:13:00.001-07:002017-09-06T12:13:04.892-07:00Białowieza - Europe's last virgin forest<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The Bia<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">ł</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">owieza
Forest in eastern Poland is somewhere I have always wanted to go –
the only genuinely virgin, untouched lowland forest in Europe. Last
week I finally got to go there, thanks to friend and colleague
Ma</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">łgosia Kiedrzynska who
organised the trip. The scale of the place is immense and to us, used
only to 'forest' being small areas of woodland, overwhelming. At
1,400 square kilometres it is almost the size of London. The border
between Poland and Belarus goes more or less down the middle. </span>
</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">At
the moment the forest has a somewhat higher 'recognition factor' than
normal, owing to the proposals by the Polish Ministry of the
Environment to allow tree felling in supposedly protected areas. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/31/poland-continue-logging-biaowieza-forest-despite-eu-court-ban" target="_blank">See the Guardian article here.</a>
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/31/poland-continue-logging-biaowieza-forest-despite-eu-court-ban>
</span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoEm_rKN7OBcehyphenhyphenTGQejoCCXnVZ0lQ7iTB6PbzMCcQUghWi1b54yLW9ai5mq7Ol-Rm77nUJkVSye4hVGUp_JHtUT6G9RtfXR66etpXODq_gG72Vo4IuEqcx1lfytDJcBJ_ju6bIQHlpZ8W/s1600/2017-09-01+10.56.41.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1065" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoEm_rKN7OBcehyphenhyphenTGQejoCCXnVZ0lQ7iTB6PbzMCcQUghWi1b54yLW9ai5mq7Ol-Rm77nUJkVSye4hVGUp_JHtUT6G9RtfXR66etpXODq_gG72Vo4IuEqcx1lfytDJcBJ_ju6bIQHlpZ8W/s400/2017-09-01+10.56.41.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">What
is intriguing for the British visitor is to see familiar species we
all share as natives, both trees and perennial ground flora, growing
in very different ways. Everything on one level is totally familiar
and on another level very different. Take the trees for a start.
There is oak, although it is nothing like as dominant as it would be
at home. Oak at home branches low down, even when fairly densely
planted, but here the trunks soar upwards, dead straight for 15m,
maybe even 20m, and then branch out rather sparsely; they look more
like something out a tropical rain forest than anything I'm familiar
with. And alder, great dense stands of them, dead straight and
soaring upwards, at least half as much again in height with what we
are familiar with from British riverbanks.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVHhd0e2BCKVODjG9k45aX1CXoQdwt4hVC5azfAMKeD04sD7cqnwLr-7ky0LT_5S-I8Sa971eEgIxixUYGmSscytzztgAUNcI03_6Tqer0H_H4YHt88hbelU6Lwtgp66HCWy_7Hk_eZn4V/s1600/2017-09-01+11.07.23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVHhd0e2BCKVODjG9k45aX1CXoQdwt4hVC5azfAMKeD04sD7cqnwLr-7ky0LT_5S-I8Sa971eEgIxixUYGmSscytzztgAUNcI03_6Tqer0H_H4YHt88hbelU6Lwtgp66HCWy_7Hk_eZn4V/s400/2017-09-01+11.07.23.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">There
is (on the Polish side) a protected core area, which you can only
enter with a guide. It is surprisingly light, with a high canopy, a
mix of hornbeam, lime (</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Tilia
cordata</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">), ash, maple
(</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Acer platanoides</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">)
and oak. Very few trees are actually that big, for reasons I didn't
get to understand. What is intriguing is the ground layer. Lots of
indicators of high fertility like ground elder and nettle, but they
are sparse and mixed up with a huge range of other species. We are so
used to seeing both these plants as aggressive weeds, but here it is
presumably lower light levels that keep them in check and allow for
greater diversity. In fact ground elder is almost universal in light
shade everywhere I went on this trip (Latvia southwards) which gives
you a different perspective on it compared to the “ohmygod what a
terrible weed” attitude we have at home where it is not actually
native. </span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBc9M3Vz2JyCIunTRygCx84NgEkSGqujnY3cq3q5hqfJQPGZYDVongza_U20uZusZbgefvebkO_3gDID_B_xNa2-xKbqtl62DpwdakaZaSFJ-BAeP49cvMiiev0A_0UQiYljUYilU6ZxVh/s1600/2017-09-01+12.25.32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBc9M3Vz2JyCIunTRygCx84NgEkSGqujnY3cq3q5hqfJQPGZYDVongza_U20uZusZbgefvebkO_3gDID_B_xNa2-xKbqtl62DpwdakaZaSFJ-BAeP49cvMiiev0A_0UQiYljUYilU6ZxVh/s400/2017-09-01+12.25.32.jpg" title="" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The
forest is divided up into a whole series of segments on a grid, put
in place by the Russians when it was an Imperial Forest in the latter
part of the Romanov regime. Each grid is marked with numbers, which
makes it actually very hard to get lost. Different grids are managed
differently, with many being commercially managed and others under
varying levels of protection. This all means that in travelling
around (which we did on bikes) you get to see an enormous range of
woodland types: different tree compositions, different
soil-determined habitats, and different types of management. And
water level, which was particularly interesting.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxMUM6fVmhaYtuE6DggePPJqJslVF_pB8yn_2Gb8iBvAhqE7f0gW5ERVX4X3N1WzOBN2fqjHy6SmgI7Ne9bH3qwBdI230v9XbjjSTgY9xLA5g4_4vAlutv5RU6XeT9PNyeYbX-3pl4Wooo/s1600/2017-09-02+12.43.14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxMUM6fVmhaYtuE6DggePPJqJslVF_pB8yn_2Gb8iBvAhqE7f0gW5ERVX4X3N1WzOBN2fqjHy6SmgI7Ne9bH3qwBdI230v9XbjjSTgY9xLA5g4_4vAlutv5RU6XeT9PNyeYbX-3pl4Wooo/s400/2017-09-02+12.43.14.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Much
of lowland Britain probably had forest like this, very wet, and at
times flooded. Now we have almost none. In fact we have no river
floodplain forest at all, and haven't had any for centuries, only a
tiny bit of alder carr (wet alder woodland) and very other little wet
woodland – most was drained or drained and cleared in the 19</span><sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">th</span></sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
century. Being here and seeing these vast swampy woodlands, where it
was simply too wet to risk walking across, gave me a sense of what a
lot of lowland Britain must have once looked like. And then there is
one area, conveniently located near our hotel, which is spruce over a
peat bog, but mysteriously given the obviously acidic conditions, the
sphagnum moss etc, there were some (famously nutrient-hungry)
nettles. Apparently this is the most westerly example of the habitat
that covers vast areas of Siberia – the taiga.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi30DfugwaUYCexgiL5uMJlQfKkodXEEOZiHP7cOuICdjR9QQZEth63qpSyaHFSXbDe4YLsKXOPjc7EAGr16W0Dyc5m2_BglXObVI83DklCJhflXknianUY8F-rwg_HfClSadTeIboCQ2Bs/s1600/2017-09-02+11.17.20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="998" data-original-width="1500" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi30DfugwaUYCexgiL5uMJlQfKkodXEEOZiHP7cOuICdjR9QQZEth63qpSyaHFSXbDe4YLsKXOPjc7EAGr16W0Dyc5m2_BglXObVI83DklCJhflXknianUY8F-rwg_HfClSadTeIboCQ2Bs/s400/2017-09-02+11.17.20.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">So
what about the notorious tree felling which has broght Biał</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">owieza
into prominence? There is a whole patchwork of old-growth forest
outside the main protected zone which the environment ministry has
started to extract timber from, under the guess of controlling spruce
bark beetle, threatening a uniquely old habitat. Commercial factors
are of course thought to be the real reason; presumably because the
old-growth trees are bigger or better quality than the truly epic
amount of younger material which could be felled without damage to
old-growth forest. The forest does seem very poorly managed from a
commercial point of view however. I noticed masses of felled timber,
much of it presumably felled for safety reasons along roads, where it
had clearly been left for years. I suspect the real reason for
felling is political provocation, as the current Polish government is
one of the few foreign admirers Donald Trump has, and which is
similarly dividing families and friends. </span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="http://kochampuszcze.pl/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Anyonewho wants to find out more, sign a petition etc. look here. </span></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
To see it in English tap the Union Jack in the top right hand corner.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
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<br />
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Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5223294603002782762.post-84107407162806770272017-08-31T12:37:00.001-07:002017-08-31T23:16:19.036-07:00Gardening's new frontier: Latvia and Lithuania <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzUNY-B7xJm8FF8RLHl4cKfzZpB4U0z3e1rxPRg6QtrfO8_BjG7sm9PzZaFGqfxUFCF8Wb1mTPDMu_XxbdG_AHGunAAaN65N_gFIwWxj4dsW5UxVh-fDzOOBHY70NrrZ1fI08SeYBDlnpB/s1600/Garden-Style-Naturalistic-design.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="940" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzUNY-B7xJm8FF8RLHl4cKfzZpB4U0z3e1rxPRg6QtrfO8_BjG7sm9PzZaFGqfxUFCF8Wb1mTPDMu_XxbdG_AHGunAAaN65N_gFIwWxj4dsW5UxVh-fDzOOBHY70NrrZ1fI08SeYBDlnpB/s320/Garden-Style-Naturalistic-design.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "cochin";"><span style="font-size: small;"> I've
been travelling to eastern Europe since 1993 when Jo got a job in
Bratislava, Slovakia. I love the area, for all sorts of reasons, and
am particularly fascinated by how societies emerge from a long period
of cultural, political and economic repression. I've just come back
from a trip where I was lecturing and teaching in Latvia and
Lithuania, two of the 'Baltic Republics'. Latvia was fantastic but
what I experienced in Lithuania was extraordinary.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "cochin";"><span style="font-size: small;"> “I
needed something for the backyard” Lina <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Liubertaitė
recalls. “People here know how to garden, but not how to make it
look nice, to design”. And so began one of the most impressive
experiments in garden promotion I have come across. Lithuania is a
small country in northern Europe, long colonised by Russia under the
guise of the communist Soviet Union, and only independent since 1991. Like
all ex-Soviet countries, growing vegetables and fruit (with a few
flowers on the side) was second nature. It had to be because the
shops were often empty. Now there is a new world, of higher living
standards, a consumer culture and many entrepreneurial possibilities.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "cochin";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> “All
the information available was so old-fashioned” Lina says. With a
background in marketing, Lina saw the possibilities for promoting
gardening, and started writing magazine articles and crucially, began
to get local experts to run courses. At the beginning it was hard, a
young woman in a rather conservative culture faced criticism as a
newcomer, and not a professional or trained horticulturalists.
Eventually she has triumphed, with her company and brand - <a href="http://geltonaskarutis.lt/" target="_blank">GeltonasKarutis</a> – Yellow Wheelbarrow.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "cochin";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Last
week I was one of the speakers at Garden Style, an annual conference
Lina has organised for three years now. There were 500 people there,
“about half the population” joked a Polish friend (the popn. is
actually 2.7million), an incredible number in a small country; a
third were professionally involved in gardening or design. Lina gave
her conference clout by inviting overseas speakers from year one:
Carrie Preston from Holland in year one. The great thing about Yellow Wheelbarrow is that it is a 'one
stop shop' for gardening – if you want to know about gardening in
Lithuania go to the website. </span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "cochin";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "cochin";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Lina
asked me to do some teaching, as her big thing is education. I ended
up teaching three day workshops back to back, with twenty people each
day. For the first two days I was interpreted by <a href="https://rasosaugalai.wordpress.com/author/rasiux/" target="_blank">Rasa Laurinavi</a></span></span></span><a href="https://rasosaugalai.wordpress.com/author/rasiux/" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "cochin";"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">č</span></span></span></span></a><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://rasosaugalai.wordpress.com/author/rasiux/" target="_blank">iene</a>,
a very innovative local gardener whose garden in a village just
outside the capital, Vilnius, is packed full of perennials. We used
the facilities of Vilnius University Botanical Garden, which is an
excellent teaching garden with a wide range of plants. As a garden
though, it still feels like it does not yet belong in the modern
world, Soviet style public gardening - with but in the best possible
way, with enough labour to continue to maintain enormous beds of
perennials, and mostly very well-labelled. </span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "cochin";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "cochin";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> As
always with east European audiences the thirst for information was
almost palpable and there is that wonderful sense that you are really
helping something develop. There were plenty of landscape architects
in both the Latvia and Lithuania groups, a good sign that quality
planting is part and parcel of larger projects here. Indeed in both
countries perennial combinations perennial plantings are beginning to
emerge in public spaces. Places to watch indeed.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
Noel Kingsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09443137231998907024noreply@blogger.com3