After what feels like weeks of rain (unforgivable to whine, though, in the light of the devastating typhoon in the Philippines, with more that 10,000 dead and second city Tacloban becoming a household name for the worst of reasons) several mornings whose sun and light feel like a blessing. It's hard to remain in the here and now when that in itself must for so many feel like a waking nightmare. I'm reminded of Emily Lawless, writing in her 1900 garden diary of the 'beloved and healing' pursuit of gardening, but troubled increasingly by events in South Africa, colouring her record with the 'red, abhorrent shadow of the battlefield'. Even so, she describes her journal as both a 'necessity' and a 'solace'. It's a curious compulsion, this obsession and both watcher and writer to 'find some written equivalence' for what is observed. The words are Tim Dee's, about J.A. Baker who in 1967 published The Peregrine, a book whose 'weirdness' is offset by its essential nature - 'the greatest and most needed bird book of my youth,' Dee says. I've mentioned Dee before. One morning last week I grabbed The Running Sky to read on the bus and was captivated all over again by his writing. This is one of a handful of month-by-month accounts which are emerging as companions on my own journal exploration, and I'm trying to ration myself, matching their weeks to ours.
So, November, but warm enough to dawdle under a Mediterranean sky, past the newly-coiffeured Pterocarya, dodging the falling fruits of Aesculus indica. A close relative of the more common horse chestnut, this Himalayan cousin produces smaller conkers with smooth shells. Even so, they clunk sharply to the ground around me and I don't fancy being underneath one as it lands. Though many of its leaves are still green, gusts of wind lift the golden ones from their high branches and set them dancing down the air above my head, some blown on an erratic diagonal past me, others pirouetting gracefully to fall about my ears in a soft rain; one smaller cluster spins vertically at high speed (why?) to land at my feet. Everywhere leaves are on the move, rattling garrulously on their stems, scudding and bowling over the grass, hurrying officiously by, swirling in papery waves and eddies and washed up in drifts where they shuffle and shift, squabbling, scheming and then they're off again...
I'm on the move too, on a walk exploring one aspect of the sensory experience offered by the Botanics in the company of gardener Paul Aston. For Paul the world of plant scents is linked with the seasons and seasonal tasks especially, from March onwards, cutting back the bushy Mediterranean herbs - lavenders, rosemary, sage - which have been left with as much foliage as possible to protect them through the cold winter, their scents lingering on his hands. We tested the different scents: rosemary and sage (sage tea apparently makes an instant miracle cure for a sore throat although make sure you use everyday or purple sage, Paul warns, as other varieties are hallucinogenic); lavenders, fennel and the lovely minty Calamintha nepeta; also the strongly curry-scented Helichrysum italicum, a member of the daisy family Asteraceae, its bare woody stems reminding me that this was what grew in our garden in Cumbria, rather than its relative the cotton lavender Santolina chamaecyparissus as we thought.
Helichrysum italicum Next, stinky weeds, identifiable by smell! Scrophularia, for example, can be distinguished from the similar-leaved salvia by its beefy Bovril smell (also try sniffing Iris foetidissima 'stinking Gladwin' for a similar fragrance, or Salvia sclarea 'housemaid's armpit' for a delicate cocktail of lavender and sweat) whilst the crushed roots of Geum urbanum, also known as wood avens or herb Bennet, have a strong smell of cloves; leave a bunch by your front door to ward off the devil. We also investigated Geranium robertianum (as well as the familiar 'herb Robert', common names include Storksbill, Dove's foot and Death come quickly), breathing in the characteristic scent. I thought I could detect the fragrance used in Neals Yard geranium and orange products.
Then on to trees. FIrst, the American sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua whose crushed leaves have a lemony camphor scent. In Turkey, the gum from the tree is made into boiled sweets. Next, Cercidiphyllum japonicum pendula: walk on its delicately coloured fallen leaves in autumn and breathe in the smell of burnt sugar. Old-school gardeners were known to identify a plant by tasting - one particular tree has a bud which, when chewed, creates a mucus-like ball in the mouth! As for the 'headache tree', take one big sniff of its crushed leaves, and guess what?
We didn't have time to visit the winter garden, where shrubs tend to be highly-scented in winter to attract pollinators from further afield - the Chimonanthus praecox 'wintersweet' and Viburnum x bodnantense, for example. Shrubs which flower through the winter here do so because they come from areas with sharp, cold winters like northern China; our winters are never cold enough to mimic theirs, but feel more like spring or summer to them. We spoke also of the function of scent: often foliage is scented as an anti-herbivory device, whilst the later flowers are scented to attract bees. Finally, on the promise of a blackcurranty smell (my only olfactory disappointment) we detoured by the salvia bay between the glasshouses. I've walked past countless times and have always been looking in the opposite direction towards the bee beds, so this happy accident was a revelation: myriad colours and leaf shapes, a mini-efflorescence in mid-November! In the wild they are generally pollinated by humming-birds. I asked Paul what was his favourite time of year: he chose May and June for new growth although he regards autumn and winter as the most creative time. Many writers seem to share this view: Clare Leighton insists that autumn is 'not the sad time it is supposed to be', but rather a 'season of planning and expectation. It is now that we plant our bulbs, in itself an act of faith'.
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