I
was in Kiev, Ukraine, last week to teach a two day workshop on
planting design. Such an amazingly enthusiastic group, as was my
group in Moscow last year. There is an incredible thirst for
information and knowledge; everything gets written down, every slide
photographed. I get the feeling that this is basically a strong
gardening culture (see my post on Russian dacha gardens) and
people are desperate to make the most of what is now on offer.
I
insisted that we do some work with real plants. Going in the middle
of the snowy winter is never my idea of the best time to visit
anywhere, but there is still a lot you can learn from plants even
when they are just sticks poking out of the pots. Victoria Manoylo, the
organiser of the event managed to get together a very good selection
of plants in 2litre pots for us to work with from a nursery. The students fell onto
these plants with an eagerness I have never seen before. Usually
people are quite cautious, with a few leading and others holding
back. This lot were straight in there, picking up the pots, knocking
plants out of them to look at the roots, and discussing eagerly. It
was a teacher's joy to see!
Great
to be in such an appropriate venue – the botanical gardens (one of
two in Kiev). We even got a tour around the glasshouses, impressive
as they were relatively new ones, compared to the semi-derelict
condition of many post-Soviet botanical institutions. Before I left I
had been told some horror stories of previous British people going
out to teach courses and being stuck in an old sanitorium complex
miles out of town in a snowy waste with terrible food (sounded like
an educational gulag). My experience was so much better, and the food
and hospitality fantastic!
People
had come from all over – so quite a bit of a challenge trying to
keep things relevant, as the country is big and sweeps from the
forested hills of the Carpathian mountains in the west, with which I
am actually a bit familiar, from holidays in eastern Slovakia and
Romania to the steppe, around Kharkiv in the east, beyond which is
the territory Vladimar Putin is trying to slice off. Rainfall drops
as you go east.
The
conflict in the east inevitably hangs over several conversations. My
conversation with Victoria in the ride from the shiny new airport
soon turns to a conflict which is dividing nations who she said are
“like brother and sister”. Others say how they have family in
Russia, but feel afraid to go there now, while Russians don't feel
comfortable visiting Ukraine any more. Its nothing about ethnicity. Everyone speaks a
common language, or culture. It's political – Russia has always
been divided between facing Europe and modernising or turning inward
into a regressive 'Oriental despotism', and of course intimately
linked to Putin's political machinations. Ukraine has always been
more European in its identity – they had one of the world's first democratic
constitutions back in the early 18th century, before being
swallowed up by the Tsars. It is frightening to see how quickly
close communities can be torn apart. Very frightening in the context
of Scotland. Not that David Cameron is going to smuggle
tanks over the border.
Visiting
the Maidan, the site of the demonstrations back last winter was a
very special and moving event. What was particularly strange was
seeing the location of where there was a massacre of demonstrators by
hidden snipers – just outside an upmarket shopping mall with a
branch of Lagerfeld and Swarwovski. Almost surreal juxtaposition.
It does feel as if garden making and quality landscape design are part of the
modernising project in this part of the world, and yet one which is also deeply culturally rooted. Not that landscape
design under communism was necessarily bad, but it had little variety
or quality, let along creativity - vast numbers of the same generalist species were used. A new era, with nurseries, some of them innovative
in their plant range, and real creativity amongst the design
profession, is all part of a new and more outward looking and more global culture. Perhaps this is part of the explanation of the incredible enthusiasm and commitment that Ukrainian and Russian garden people have.
