Kate Chisholm

The gardener-soldiers of the First World War

Plus: a diary of 1914 – as Richard Strauss and the Ballets Russes hit London, Archduke Ferdinand prepares to visit Sarajevo

Soil arrives for Flanders Fields Memorial Photo: Laura Lean/PA

First, a confession. Even an ardent radio addict can enjoy a fortnight away from the airwaves, disconnected, switched off, unlistening. On return even the programmes that are usually ignored because they’ve become so familiar catch your attention. I grew up with Gardeners’ Question Time as a regular weekly slot on Sunday afternoons, snooze time for my overworked Dad, but stopped listening after the great schism of 1994, when the entire panel abandoned the BBC and moved over to the new Classic FM station because they didn’t like the way the BBC was handing over its production to an independent company. The illusion that the programme was a bit otherworldly, not part of the hard-bitten news and current affairs schedules or the argy-bargy of commerce, was shattered. On Sunday, though, I happened upon it by chance and for once didn’t switch off precisely because I was still relishing that particular pleasure of listening to disembodied voices, taking me into another world, beyond my usual sphere.

The format of GQT has been tweaked a bit since it began in 1947. It’s not all about answering questions these days but also includes interviews and visits to specialist gardens. My ear was tweaked when instead of more questions about yellow leaves on a skimmia plant or aphids on lupins (asked by an audience in Tiverton) we were suddenly taken back 100 years to Flanders and the trenches. Matthew Wilson was on a visit to the Flanders Fields Memorial Garden, which is being constructed at the Wellington Barracks in London (filled with sandbags of soil collected by schoolchildren from the battlefields of Belgium). In conversation with the garden historian Russell Clark we heard that there are photographs of soldiers from the great conflict of 1914–18 in the trenches carrying watering cans along the duckboards to water their improvised gardens.

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