Gardening

Thursday

Siam Goorwich

How not to kill your house plants

The year was 2015, and I was head over heels, completely obsessed with House of Hackney’s Palmeral wallpaper. The bold print features fans of colonial green palm leaves splayed across a soothing off-white background, and I fantasised about plastering it over all four walls of my London living room, thinking it was the closest I was going to get to living in a tropical paradise any time soon. But as it turns out, I was thinking small. Very small. Sproutl – a schmancy new gardening and outdoor living platform – have just launched a tropical plant collection in collaboration with none other than The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; so now

Susan Hill Susan Hill

Diary – 6 June 2019

Don’t you just love garden centres? You have to be mad to go on a sunny Sunday morning in the full bedding-out season but all human life is there, enjoying the full English breakfast or even kippers. They sell everything — sofas, lamps, barbecues, waterfalls, bread, toys, meat, mountaineering gear. Oh, and plants and Growmore and those little windmill things. I went to buy extra geraniums and lobelia because it is a truth universally acknowledged that whenever you buy far more than you can possibly need for your pots, those pots expand when you turn your back. It was a gladiatorial clash of trolleys, and I trampled on several old

Thursday

Anne de Courcy

Gardening’s bad girl: the genius – and malice – of Ellen Willmott

In October 1897, the grandees of the Royal Horticultural Society gathered to bestow their highest award, the Victoria Medal of Honour, struck to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, to 60 of gardening’s greatest luminaries. For the first time, these included two women. One was Gertrude Jekyll, known by all as the Queen of Spades; the other was the 39-year-old Ellen Willmott. But Willmott did not turn up. This public snub was the beginning of her reputation as ‘gardening’s bad girl’, as Sandra Lawrence puts it, one that increased exponentially until it exploded in stories of daffodils being booby-trapped to deter bulb thieves. By trawling through innumerable newly discovered diaries and

Thursday

Ursula Buchan

Earthly paradises: the best of the year’s gardening books

Important historic gardens fall into two main categories: those made by one person, whose vision has been carefully preserved down the years, sometimes for centuries, and those that are altered and developed by succeeding generations. Rousham, in Oxfordshire, is an example of the first and Bodnant, in the Conwy valley in north Wales, the second. Books on both have been published this year. Francis Hamel is an artist, whose studio is in an old stable close to ‘the big house’ at Rousham, which was built in 1635 by the Dormer family. With the exception of the present owners, Charles and Angela Cottrell-Dormer — whose ancestor, General James Dormer, employed William

Thursday

Daisy Dunn

Fortifying snapshot of the gardener’s year: Saatchi Gallery’s RHS Botanical Art show reviewed

Elizabeth Blackadder, who died last month at the age of 89, was probably the most distinctive botanical artist of our time. Her paintings of lilies and irises, of cats poking their heads imperiously between poppies and freesias, are more alive than any such chocolate-box description could convey. The first woman to be elected to both the Royal and the Royal Scottish academies, Blackadder showed that botanical painting did not need to be twee and parochial. It could be as vibrant and interesting as narrative. The 15 artists and 19 photographers participating in this year’s Royal Horticultural Society exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery follow in Blackadder’s tradition. The Saatchi may not

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: In defence of organic food

A note about manure Sir: I am afraid Matt Ridley shows a lack of understanding about agriculture in general and organic production in particular in his argument against organic food (‘Dishing the dirt’, 24 July). Livestock production has involved the use of animal faeces — or farmyard manure as it is called when mixed with straw — ever since livestock was first housed in the 1800s. Bacterial infections are due to poor hygiene in the slaughter and processing chain, not how animals are fed, grass is produced, or the use of manure, which is an important by-product. Bean sprouts being infected with E.coli is probably down to poor hygiene of

Thursday

James Bartholomew

The strange death of the English garden

Gardening is dead. It had been ailing for a long time and it sometimes looked as though it might pull through. But I knew it had finally kicked the bucket when the last of the three patches of grass I used to be able to see behind my house was replaced with a plastic lawn. Then there was a ghastly death rattle: plastic ivy was draped over an electric gate which serves to let the owner’s car into the paved area formerly known as the front garden. And that came after the arrival of dozens of plastic balls in the neighbourhood. They are supposed to be imitations of Buxus sempervirens

Thursday

David Crane

Straight lines and grandiose schemes — Napoleon the gardener

On 1 January 1806, a little over one year after his coronation, the Emperor Napoleon ordered the abolition of France’s new republican calendar and a return to the old Gregorian model. Over the past seven years republicans had grown used to ‘empire creep’, but even for those who had been forced to watch the principles of the revolution dismantled one by one and a republican general metamorphose into Emperor of the French, this last insult carried a peculiarly symbolic charge. For all its engaging dottiness — each new year, coinciding with the autumnal equinox, would begin on a different date — the short-lived republican calendar had embodied some of the

Thursday

Alex Preston

Sowing seeds of comfort

If you had asked me a year ago how a pandemic-panicked world of stockpiles, curfews and social isolation would influence my life in the garden, I might have drawn you a picture of myself as a kind of prepper homesteader, proudly feeding my family from the veg beds, trading spuds for loo rolls in the lanes around my house. As it was, last year was all about flowers for me, and while the lettuces and tomatoes were indeed bountiful and welcome, it was the glory of the sweet peas — the first thing I smelt on recovering from Covid — and the roses and dahlias that meant most. When all

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Why the Chelsea Flower Show shake-up is good news

Is it really such a bad thing that the Chelsea Flower Show has been postponed to the autumn because of Covid?  Yes, we’ll be missing out on the blousy, frothiness of early summer gardens that we see every year – not so many umbellifers, alliums or delphiniums – and yes, the Floral Pavilion will be strange without the heady scent of roses from the David Austin and Peter Beales stands. But the show will benefit enormously from a shake-up that forces designers to stop using the plants listed above until it seems there is nothing else you could possibly grow in your garden. Every year, a presenter or commentator gushes

Thursday

Lloyd Evans

Defund theatres – and give the money to gardeners and bingo halls

For nearly six months our subsidised playhouses, notably the National Theatre, have been dark. What have we missed? Not much. Some would say nothing at all. And this has come as a surprise to those of us who were led to believe that the subsidised theatre is critical to ‘the national conversation’. It turns out that the nation can happily debate political and social issues without the help of playwrights or actors. Perhaps it’s time to re-examine our state-funded theatres and the reasons we support them. The National Theatre was set up in 1963, soon after the establishment of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1961, and both received funding from

Thursday

Daisy Dunn

The best podcasts for all your corona-gardening needs

The American diet was probably at its healthiest in the second world war. Fearing interruption to supply chains, Washington launched a national Victory Gardening programme within a fortnight of Pearl Harbor, and saw two thirds of the population heed the cry to fill their backyards, rooftops and window boxes with veg. The scheme was so successful that, by 1943, home-gardeners were producing 43 per cent of all fresh food consumed. ‘Dig for Victory’, the latest episode of Gastropod, a superbly researched food and science podcast, opens with the co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley rustling bags of manure as they attempt to plant tomatoes, peppers and ‘urbs’ in a tiny

Thursday

Ursula Buchan

Gardening is a powerful antidote to grief, pain and loss

Viewed from a purely private garden perspective, this has been a ver mirabilis. The blossom has been wonderful and long-lasting, the sun has shone on the daffodils and tulips, and there has been enough moisture in the ground for impressive growth in trees, shrubs and vegetables. Thanks to lockdown and all its confinements, I have enjoyed an intensity of engagement with my garden I’ve rarely experienced since the days when I was a young, mustard-keen apprentice gardener. I feel as if I have watched every leaf unfurl, every flower open, every bird swoop across the lawn. Spring gardening, with its pleasant, mindful monotony of pricking out seedlings and pulling up

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: The joy of balconies

The closing of churches Sir: Stephen Hazell-Smith is quite right in writing that churches should re-open (Letters, 18 April), however the issue is now more fundamental. Recent weeks have demonstrated a crisis of leadership in almost every aspect of national life, excluding the Queen, who has exercised a spiritual leadership made necessary by the failure of bishops. The closing of churches may be seen as a defining moment in the life of the Church of England. As the Archbishop of Canterbury broadcast from his kitchen on Easter Day, impervious to the damage his ‘leadership’ has caused, many Anglican clergy and people I know looked to the image of the Pope

Thursday

Ursula Buchan

A tribute to the grandes dames of gardening — Beth Chatto and Penelope Hobhouse

There is no longer much point buying strictly practical gardening books, such as were a staple of the publishing industry in years gone by. Those colourful, cheery, cheap volumes have been superseded by trustworthy websites, such as that of the Royal Horticultural Society, which can quickly answer any query you have about cultivation, plant identification or pest damage. Gardening books these days must offer something not to be found online, if readers are to shell out their precious British pounds: deep, hard-earned knowledge, elegant writing, attractive illustrations and, preferably, all three. This year, at least, there are a number that pass the test. There hasn’t been a decent book on

Thursday

Non Morris

Cottage gardens

The confusion is understandable. You arrive at Anne Hathaway’s Cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon, keen to experience the quintessential cottage garden — only to be told that Shakespeare’s garden was, in fact, designed in the 1920s. The space in front of an Elizabethan cottage would have been used for keeping pigs or hens, with a patch for cabbages or onions. Any flowers or herbs would have had medicinal or practical uses, not least for strewing on the cottage floor to disguise the stench. By the 19th century, the garden at Hathaway’s Cottage had become more decorative, but it was the Edwardian plantswoman Ellen Willmott who filled the front with flowers and introduced

Thursday

Ursula Buchan

Chelsea Flower Show

Chelsea, the most famous flower show in the world, pulled in its devotees once more this week, with its accustomed mixture of colour, scent and glamour. The continuing success of the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘flagship’ show has much to do with the BBC’s need to fill schedules, the foreign media’s enduring fascination with ‘Englishness’ and royalty, and the desire of committed gardeners to worship in the company of their co-religionists. It cannot be any kind of fun for plant nursery people, who stage the exhibits in the Great Pavilion, since the logistical difficulties are fearsome, but they mostly cannot resist the buzz. The ranks have thinned a little in recent

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 11 April 2019

All Cameron’s fault Sir: In this time of febrile political speculation, there can have been few more arresting subject headings on your Letters page than ‘Not Cameron’s fault’ (6 April). Your correspondent Mike Jeffes added to the sense of unreality by writing that ‘Cameron did nothing wrong’. You need to be neither a Remainer nor Brexiteer to follow in horror the painful result of Cameron’s opening of this Pandora’s Box in 2016. In the 2010 and 2015 elections, the subject of Europe was well down on the list of voter concerns, but with a mixture of hubris, stupidity, and narrow political interest, Cameron’s decision to call the referendum has driven

Thursday

Ursula Buchan

Gardening books: Other men’s flowers

There are probably no more gifted professional gardeners in England than Jim Buckland and Sarah Wain, husband and wife and joint head gardeners at West Dean in Sussex. On the verge of their retirement, after 27 years of effecting a renaissance in the gardens and grounds of this country house arts centre (bequeathed by Edward James), the couple have described their work and achievements in At West Dean: The Creation of an Exemplary Garden (White Lion, £40). The lucid, educated text, written by Jim and overseen by Sarah, is, mercifully, no empty exercise in heart-tugging nostalgia but an unsentimental account of hard-won practical experience in a multi-faceted, forward-looking horticultural enterprise,

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

How does your garden grow?

What could be more British than nosying around someone else’s private property while munching on a slice of cake? The National Garden Scheme allows you to do both, opening up people’s back gardens to the public and offering them a lovely homemade afternoon tea while they’re at it. I grew up poring over the pages of its famous Yellow Book of open gardens, envying the fat borders of geraniums and delphiniums in the rural area where we lived. But the NGS doesn’t just do big walled gardens and sweeping lawns; it has a London Yellow Book, too, and while the gardens are far smaller, the plants, the cakes and even