The quotation about language in the last paragraph is taken from Jason Cowley's 'Editor's Letter', the introduction to The New Nature Writing (Granta 2008)
The words of the auctioneer’s warning have dogged my footsteps in recent weeks, and not just with the sense of the season’s winding up for this year. I’ve never been to an auction, apart from the annual post-harvest festival sale of produce in the village church in Cumbria, a good-natured if amateurish affair where local farmers vied with parish wives to take home gifts which they’d contributed in the first place. Willingham Auctions is a beast of a different nature as I discovered when my mum’s furniture went under the hammer a couple of weekends ago. Not in person: but I discovered that, via the internet, you can follow an auction pretty much anywhere in the world – no cameras, but with a live feed of bids and sales, a bit like tuning in to a live match commentary, but with an option to switch on the sound from the saleroom, so that you hear the fate of each item. I only intended to catch our first ‘lot’ – it didn’t take long to learn the lingo – but found it a riveting process which kept me glued to the computer for much of the day. Fortunately perhaps, Mum was unaware that this was going on; so for us this shedding of a lifetime’s accumulation of worldly goods had an added poignancy. For years she was a keen collector of antiques, silverware, fine china, believing that it enriched our lives and would be something of value for us to inherit. In the end, despite the sensitive handling of all at Willingham, it became just so much stuff to dispose of. The process of getting rid of the old is of course reflected everywhere you look in the natural world just now. I’m not sure if it’s a rationalisation of my own ageing or simply a tendency to the maudlin, but there is something endlessly fascinating, I feel, in things when they are past their ‘best’. I like the sense of stripping down to the essentials: rather than being dazzled by colour or distracted by scent, you are left with the thing itself. I find myself stopping at every second step as I wander through the garden, marvelling at the form and texture of branch and twig, snapping away at bare stems and browning seedheads and dead stuff. I recall in the early days of the residency being enchanted with the way the phrase ‘gone over’ has slid into botanical terminology. Now, when a plant has ‘gone over’, I see a chance to appreciate the shape of the thing or, even more captivating, the architecture of the whole. Whilst I appreciate the artifice of garden design, though, it is the sense of what nature can do for itself which is the real magic for me. Hence, I suppose, my affection for prairie plantings and wild gardens, for the valerian still going strong in the wall at the bottom of my street rather than the most perfectly cultivated exotic. The sense of an ending was echoed for me in the Matisse exhibition, the cut-outs a way for the artist to combine art and gardens in his final years. It’s also on my mind as I ration myself to a few pages a day of Dear Friend and Gardener, anxious not to reach the year’s end before the correspondents, Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd. Determined to visit Lloyd’s garden in Northiam before it closes for the winter, I book a couple of nights in a B&B in Rye, a bus ride away. And it’s not just Great Dixter that beckons: I’ve worked out that I can also travel by bus from Rye to New Romney and from there, on the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, remembered from childhood, to Dungeness. It’s almost four years since I first saw Derek Jarman’s garden at Prospect House, mid-way through what proved to be Mum’s last ‘Music at Leisure’ event at the Imperial Hotel in Hythe. A rather dismal weekend, I remember, the skies as grey as the concrete sea defences and the sea itself, so that the deep brown walls and yellow paintwork of the cottage, and the more muted tones of garden and shingle banks took on a technicolour brilliance. Since then, and now 20 years since his death, Jarman has accompanied my own faltering steps into the world of gardens, a repeated reminder to be bold and outward-looking, and to keep to the discipline of writing – even at his most poorly, Jarman wrote in his journal almost every day. After all, as Ali Smith says, it is the writing which sustains us; and love, of course. What’s left of us, according to Christopher Woodward, Director of the Garden Museum is not, as Larkin would have it, only ‘love’ but also dust (‘just under 3 kilogrammes if you are cremated’, he says) and ‘the paper and electronic trail of an archive’. The Garden Museum’s project to set up the country’s first archive of garden design is in some ways a paradox in itself: ‘no one wishes the tangling, hopeful thing that is a garden to be frozen for ever in the unchanging light of a vitrine’, Woodward says. Still, the projected future of the Museum is a far cry from this Sleeping Beauty effect: restoration and refurbishment of the lovely little church of St-Mary-at-Lambeth creating five new galleries, a building extension comprising two new education pavilions and a café, and an archive study room with a three-storey tower housing over 100,000 items, a ‘collective memory of British gardens’, in particular the making of the modern garden. Digital access means that the museum’s treasures will have an unlimited audience. It’s a massively ambitious project and fund-raising is currently underway to match the Heritage Lottery Fund’s £3 million grant. Love and dust aside, Woodward himself raised almost £40,000 last month in an 8-day 125 mile swim of the Thames from Oxford to London, designed to highlight the museum’s intention to reclaim John Tradescant’s Ark, a plant hunter’s ‘cabinet of curiosities’, from the Ashmolean Museum. Going but thankfully not gone, then. Which is more than can be said for the world’s wild life, 50 % of which has been lost in the last 40 years according to the World Wildlife Fund, as habitats are destroyed and ‘unsustainable numbers’ of animals are killed for food. Knowing that this loss is driven by human consumption, this is clearly a ‘call to arms’ says Mike Barratt, director of science and policy at WWF. A loss felt more keenly perhaps, or at least more immediately by the country’s poorest, is the £3 billion a year which will disappear from Britain’s budget if a Tory government is re-elected, under chancellor George Osborne’s proposed two-year freeze on benefits and tax credits. The fight against what seems unacceptable, globally or nationally, has increasingly become the province of the petition rather than the streets (although what about recent climate change marches – and Hong Kong demonstrations? Perhaps a change is in the air.) Some of the footage of protestors taking to the streets in the film ‘Pride’ which I saw recently recalled for me the emotional impact of being part of a mass protest, not at all the same feeling involved in signing an on-line petition. In a way it felt like watching the sad passing of the whole Labour movement, as well as a grim reminder of those early days of AIDS and the prejudices and ignorance with which it was greeted. Some things have definitely gone for the better. And what has this to do with gardens? Of course the past is essential: the brown seed-heads I’ve been enjoying in the last few days rely on their past to secure our future. Even so, the ‘gardener’s natural – and healthy – tendency is to look forward’: Christopher Woodward again. Whilst there are things worth fighting for, and fighting against, there are also aspects of the past that we have to let go if we are not to become stifled by what Christopher Lloyd called ‘the dead hand of tradition’. A garden may still be, as Francis Bacon put it 400 years ago, the ‘purest of human pleasures’, affording an escape or at least a space for contemplation, and for many of us this is an essential aspect of our health and well-being. ‘Hearts starve as well as bodies,’ the old anthem goes. ‘Give us bread but give us roses.’ Jenny Uglow puts it neatly: ‘We may think we are tending our garden, but of course, in many different ways, it is the garden and the plants that are nurturing us.' Increasingly, though, the garden seems to have its roots in the impurities of ordinary life. Whether you’re a guerrilla gardener, engaged in the war against neglect and scarcity of public space to grow things, or an individual committed to peat-free soils or drought-tolerant plants which need little watering, gardening is increasingly a political act. Ostrich time is definitely on the way out. And in the same way that gardening demands a new attitude, perhaps writing about gardens similarly demands a new language or form, something ‘urgent, vital and alert to the defining particulars of our times’. Definitely a timely reminder that, as far as the residency goes, my time is running out. Jenny Uglow wrote A Little History of British Gardening (Chatto & Windus 2005)
The quotation about language in the last paragraph is taken from Jason Cowley's 'Editor's Letter', the introduction to The New Nature Writing (Granta 2008)
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I was on the case anyway, but a nudge from one of the most faithful readers – ‘Is there a blog due?’ – reminds me that there’s been quite a gap. In fact, I find ten lines or so which I began last month, and nothing posted for getting on for seven weeks. I can’t even find a convincing reason: trying to get back onto various horses at once, I suppose, & hampered by rather a lot of life getting in the way. At last, I’m feeling more or less back to normal, Mum’s been in and then out of hospital, and finally the long hot summer seems to be over. I can’t say I’m sorry. From the Station Road gate, many indicators of how long I’ve been away. Tall stems of Verbena bonariensis bounce gawkily in the breeze in a gaudy mix of colour, clumps of sedum whose flowerheads have faded to an elderly pink amongst vivid yellows and crimsons, and the strikingly blue-purple hoods of Aconitum carmichaelii var arendsii, a cultivar of the Chinese wolfbane. Prompted by the Garden’s notes, I investigate the dark veins on the hoods and the ‘pompom of black anthered stamens’ within, careful not to touch: in common with all monkshoods, all parts of this plant are highly toxic. The ‘autumn crocus’ Colchicum byzantium (despite its name, not a ‘true’ crocus at all – it has the Colchicaceae family to itself) reminds us of the season’s shift. Where the rain has penetrated the tree cover, the flowers are splayed flat on the earth. From pale mauve to a strident purple, some still stand upright; others lean towards the horizontal. Where the light catches them, the petals are almost translucent. They are sometimes known as naked ladies for their habit of shedding all foliage by mid-summer to reveal their pale funnel stems. And popping up everywhere under the trees are clumps of tiny Cyclamen hederafolium, ivy-leaved cyclamen or ‘sowbread’. Native to woodland, shrubby and rocky areas in the Mediterranean, the flowers might have been grouped to illustrate the pink spectrum, from a delicate almost bone china white to magenta. The acers beside the path are beginning to turn, their reddening leaves sheltering flimsy angled propellers making ready to spin their seeds groundwards. Autumnal it is, but the garden’s flowers show no sign of hunkering down for the winter. As usual I’m drawn to the bee beds: purples and blues predominate here, too, though with a lightness of touch. A lovely leggy creature of forget-me-not blue turns out to be Salvia uliginosa, ‘bog sage’. Native to South America, from Brazil to Argentina, it is described by the RHS as a ‘robust herbaceous perennial’. Opposite, outside the glasshouses, other members of the Lamiaceae family join with the burnt orange of dahlias in a more intense celebration of colour. Salvia guaranitica ‘Blue Enigma’ (along with its Mexican neighbour Salvia patens, ‘spreading sage’ or ‘gentian sage’) catches my eye. It has flowers described by Gardeners’ World as ‘a most alluring’ deep blue. It was introduced to horticulture by Irish gardener and writer William Robinson, who led the reaction against artifice and formal Victorian gardens towards more naturalistic mixed plantings and the wild garden. And there’s a Cambridge connection: in 1866, at the age of 29, he joined the Linnaean Society, sponsored by, among others, Charles Darwin. I read that its leaves are ‘anise-scented’ when crushed and make a mental note to check this on the way out. The plant pops up on the Great Dixter web pages (’fairly hardy but watch it’), reminding me that a recent article has set me wondering if I can somehow combine a visit there with a short autumn break. I find I am missing a ladder-making workshop there today! I see that there is also a paler-flowered variety of the guaranitica called ‘Argentine Skies’, automatically securing it in my list of horticultural friends. Like the uliginosa a native of South America, Blue Enigma’s alternative common name is ‘Hummingbird Sage’. Early in the mornings the main lawn is dotted with pinpricks of light where the sun catches the dew. On the raised bed at the edge of the New Zealand garden, patches of lacy cobweb draw my attention to a plant I’ve managed to ignore until now. The pirri-pirri bur Acaena novae-zelandiae was originally introduced into Britain from Australia and New Zealand, I learn, via seeds in imported wool but has become invasive, a problem particularly in habitats like cliffs and dunes where native species are already threatened. There’s a rather refreshing back-to-work feel in the café and fortunately this is infectious. I’m intending my next creative piece to be written in the voice of the soil, but I’m unsure where to start, and hoping that I will find a soil expert to talk to, or at least someone who is passionate about earth. Meanwhile I try to scoop a handful of dirt from underneath the peonies but the ground is hard, dry and dusty and I can’t detect any smell. I remember my planned smell test on the salvia leaves as I pass and pick a couple to crush, but it takes considerable imagination to detect even the slightest hint of aniseed. Heading back towards the Station Road gate, to the right of the path there is a new bed featuring and describing the national collection of geraniums and behind this, two rows of corn eight or nine feet high. I’m sure the earth was bare, having been recently dug over, last time I was here. Have these monsters really grown so fast, or were they planted as mature specimens? Opposite, in front of the plant growth facility, a new bed of rosemary and lavenders, more relatives of the salvias, whose mingled scents are blown towards me as if straight from the Mediterranean. Perhaps I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to summer. Tate Modern’s exhibition ‘Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs’ which I manage to catch in its final week transports me back to France and a garden of a different sort. Always treating his garden as an extension of his studio, when confined often to bed in his last years Matisse surrounded himself with leaves, flowers, fruits and birds cut out of painted paper, pinned to the walls but not too firmly so that they breathed and fluttered as if in a breeze. He constantly changed the arrangement of shapes as a gardener might move plants, so that his ‘garden’ evolved organically on the walls of the studio. And like a garden, the flux and proliferation of the form and colour mean that the work is always a work in progress, never finished. Henri Matisse, pictured in his studio. Photograph: Lydia Delectorskaya /Succession Henri Matisse
On inside, outside, Rohinton Mistry, Parkinsons, and end of life choices (an optional extra - not for the squeamish!) It began with low back-ache. I woke with it on Saturday morning, blamed the strange bed, and didn’t think more of it. By the time we arrived at the beach late morning, the aches and pains had spread and I wasn’t enjoying the sun. I sat in the shade and read, watching the waves. My stomach was in some kind of turmoil. I couldn’t face lunch and felt generally unwell. We left early and I dozed in the back of the car for the journey home. There, I went straight to bed, sleeping only fitfully. It was when I finally dropped off to sleep properly first thing on Sunday morning that disaster struck, in the form of epic diarrhoea. By the time I was awake it was too late. I did my best to clear up but Di was ahead of me, a clean bed ready for me to crawl back into by the time I was out of the shower. I always said, this was the bottom line for me, I told Di. And is it? Di said. I wasn’t sure. So the last few days of my holiday were spent mostly inside, in bed. Once the worst of the fever was past and Di no longer had to worry about calling the pompiers (the French equivalent of dialling 999), or fight my need to pull the quilt up to my chin, I lay on my back and watched meringues of cloud glide past in a powder blue sky. When I felt a bit better I hitched myself up so that I could see the tops of the trees and, eventually, to sitting, to see how my view of the outside world had shrunk. From the right, one tall conifer; next, somewhat closer, a copper beech, dusky red, its limbs swaying in the wind; to its left and further back another conifer, its topmost branches culminating in clawed fingers; next in line but further forward again, a pale wispy young conifer (evidently I am not the only one ailing); last, what I think is a single poplar. Poplars are my favourite trees – they spell home to me in East Anglia (and Brittany) and I love their busy whispering. Di points out that in fact this is the first of the line of poplars leading up the hill from the lake into Mur – and of course it is. This particular view belongs only to this room and the landing. How come I have never seen it properly before? Opposite my bed there’s a painting. It’s always been there, hanging on the pale blue papered wall, but I’ve never looked at it really, only noticed the fact of its being there. The wallpaper dates from when Joseph the farmer and his wife lived here. I imagine them lying in bed and looking at their own painting, perhaps. Or would they have had photographs? This painting, though, is one of Di’s. It shows an interior, russets and creams, with shelves of books, a table with a mug – I recognise that mug! – but it turns out to be a different one, and the corner of a hearth. Its warmth and textures make it a room you want to be in. But, in the centre, French windows that open on to a garden, luscious in lemons and greens, with a winding path. The garden beckons: an escape, the promise of a future. Oh that, Di says when I ask. Third year college probably. I was very influenced by Bonnard* in those days – you know, all those domestic interiors. She brings me a book about Bonnard, lovingly written by his nephew, and I turn the pages, look at the pictures, read about the artist in his canvas hat at the other end of France, painting all those insides and outsides. In a day or two I’m feeling well enough to move to the chair, which sits in front of the window at an angle, with a different view. In the right of the frame the garage – stone wall, corrugated roof – has the stems of wisteria rampant along its facing wall; the flowers are out of view. Above this, branches of the palest pink rose, which Nick tells me later might be a Madame Alfred Carriere, wave straggly arms in the stiff breeze. Beyond the garage and furthest from view, a massy walnut: you can see its solid architecture through the leaves. Wrapped tight round one of its branches, a thick rope; below what’s visible here, Nick tells me, the rope loops round to make a rough swing. He found the rope on a beach somewhere in Scotland, dragged it to the van and home. He hoped that visiting children would find and enjoy the swing though they haven’t yet. It seems to me a blessing to have a garden full of walnut trees and indeed the green walnuts add to the cornucopia of blackberries, white currants, raspberries and plums which the garden offers but the organic compound juglone produced by walnuts, in particular the black walnut, poisons the earth around it and can be toxic to nearby plants. A lavatera with a deep pink flower and a darker centre around what from here appears to be a yellow dot stretches over the garage roof. At my right hand – I can find it without looking – a shelf of books put together for my stay. My first choice from this shelf was Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters. I’d loved A Fine Balance some years ago, so it seemed an obvious choice. Only pages in, I discovered that the central character is an older man with Parkinson’s. He deteriorates after a fall and the difficulties of caring for someone in this position, and of being that someone cared for, become central to the narrative. I say difficulties, in that Mistry certainly doesn’t shy away from the trickier issues of managing the toilet needs of a family member with decreased mobility and increasing incontinence. What surprised me, and kept me reading I guess, was the extraordinary tenderness, and humour, with which Mistry treats this area, and the ways in which he explores the positives of the circumstance as well as its negatives. For me, as I said to Di, this has always been the bottom line, in the sense of the final total, the point beyond which I choose not to step. Incontinence, its indignities and dependencies, are a step too far: when that point comes, I end my life, hopefully with friends around me. I have even made a sort of arrangement for this. I remember my mum repeating with similar assurance, ‘When the time comes that I’m too decrepit to look after myself, I hope you’ll put me in a home.’ In the event, we had the devil’s own job to persuade her. Now, suddenly, I find myself the other side of that line. How did that happen? I wasn’t ready. When I apologise for the umpteenth time, Di smiles: ‘It’s been a privilege,’ she says. I’m back home now, with a rather different set of memories from the usual, and food for thought; a good job, since I can’t actually eat much. Alongside many of our conversations about the state of the world, particularly taxed by the appalling plight of the Palestinians in Gaza and also by the abject failings of the British government, we strayed often to the subject of care for the – elderly? Even the word has an unpleasantly condescending feel about it. Since two out of the three of us have surviving parents who have become something of a burden, though, it’s a topic we return to. I’m feeling that, as a society and as individuals, we have talked ad nauseam about the thing in the abstract, but less about the concrete realities. In other words, what plans have I made, or should I make, to avoid the recognition that suddenly, one day, I am the other side of that line and I see in the face of a family member or dear friend, or on their shoulders, the weight of the burden? (Remember the young woman and her brother, in ‘Love Actually’? Yes, it may actually be love, but it’s terrible. If you’re a fan, you’ll know what I mean.) We had an ‘End of Life Care’ meeting with my mum and the nursing home staff recently. Mum was perplexed by the idea that she might have choices to make, preferring to leave it all to the ‘experts’ or, ultimately I suppose, her god. So, the bottom line? I’m less sure, but sure I have to think this thing through. I found so much to look at and enjoy in the painting at the end of the bed, the view from the window, much more there in the detail than I’ve even begun to consider; and so much that’s been there all along that I’ve simply been too busy or too preoccupied to miss. Something about learning to be fully aware of what’s around us, and the value in the ordinary. And in case you think I’ve gone completely ‘People’s Friend’, no I’m not saying for a minute that the scent of a flower makes everything worthwhile and anything bearable. Just that sometimes, you need a knock on the head, or an invasion of your own interior, to get you to see what’s in front of you. And perhaps there might be a kind of grace to be found in accepting care, friendship or kindness. (* Thanks to those who spotted the spelling error - corrected now!)
Cyclotourisme is big here: our local small town Mur-de-Bretagne is hosting a week of cyclotourisme for a thousand or so young people, plus 200 ‘educators’, from across France. Parked outside the chemist’s to collect a prescription, we find ourselves trapped in supporter role while the whole party cycles past us up the hill. Some of the riders are tiny – eight is the minimum age – and now and then we see a miniature rider given a bit of a helping hand from adults on either side. One small boy sails by on a unicycle. One or two teens manage a wheelie. There’s much good-humoured noise, chanting, greeting and waving and we spot the new mayor on the corner outside the Mairie, looking very French. Meanwhile I skulk round the garden, sniffing and snapping. The sempervivum is new to me: unremarkable from a distance, when you get down to its level it’s as elaborate as a passion flower, its inner circle of pinheads twinkling in the sun. I have christened it the penis plant, though Di is doubtful – looks painful, she says. Its more common nickname is the houseleek, apparently from the custom of planting them on the house roof to deter lightning strikes. This sounds so unlikely it must be true. The wisteria has launched into a second flowering, and the buddleia outside the cottage is producing huge swollen cones of rather grubby vanilla. There are chaffinches nesting nearby – now I’ve learnt to recognise their song from the twiddly coda, I hear them all the time. There’s a pair of wagtails with a nest in the side wall of the cottage, too – hop hop and scamper – and house martins in and out of the shed. Nick points out a cinnabar moth caterpillar, tiger-striped. One evening I happen upon Nick poking a stuck pellet out of the air rifle, and I’m allowed a try at a target he’s pinned on a tree trunk. It’s the first time I’ve held a gun since my teens. It’s so heavy I have to rest it on the watering can. And my shot? Well, it hits the right tree… Nick has a go, and almost makes the bulls eye; a fluke, he says. The gun is for rabbits supposedly but they’re not impressed. Actually the livestock is – more noticeable here – I suppose that’s living in the country, really in the country. We surprise a heron one morning on the lake, a kingfisher another day. More butterflies now – lots of small brown, also fritillaries and the odd red admiral, and occasional lemons and blues. The wasps are twice the size of the Cambridge variety, with a disconcerting habit of zooming and diving when you least expect it. And there have been goats at every turn: in numbers in one of the first films, Le Quattro Volte, on our walks, emerging out of Di’s past. The cows – lovely brown and white beasts, always clean and polished – have gone from the back field to have their babies elsewhere, and with them many of the flies, tiny things which hang in the air in droves. Fortunately there is a fine fly-catcher here, in the shape of small tennis racket, with an electrified mesh which frazzles on impact – if you ever manage to hit any. Quite satisfying whacking at the air anyway when the flies get too troublesome. And speaking of trouble, the sad affair of the dancing mouse. We’d already found one in the trap, flat on its back with its legs in the air. The second, a few days later had somehow skated off the worktop onto the floor, complete with trap, performed a few pirouettes no doubt – and there he was in the morning. Aah! For several days we wake to a forecast of storms but, apart from the odd shower, nothing happens and the days continue hot. Two afternoons walking: a delightful seven kilometres through woodland near Malguénac and a rather punishing one under fearsome sun near to Melrand, the Circuit de St Clément. We do, though, discover his chapel (St Clément’s that is, another of my collection of saints if you go by my maiden name), lovingly restored in 1972 with a gallery of very seventyish photos to prove it. With the promise of a cold beer and a meal in Di & Nick’s favourite restaurant in St-Nicolas-des-Eaux we agree to look at art in two more chapels, including the extraordinary Chapelle Saint-GIldas, at Bieuzy, a tiny 16th century chapel built into the rock above a river, Here our first disappointment: the art work in the windowless inner chamber, Emmanuelle Villard’s Ritournelles, depends on electricity for its ‘scintillement de verroteries multicolores’ and so is not working due to ‘the storms’. Admittedly the skies are looking pretty menacing as we drive up to St. Nicolas. We sit for half an hour on the terrace of a riverside bar with the long-awaited cold beer, watching the storm gather, and retreat inside when the rain becomes torrential. The storm is remarkable, a constant flickering punctuated with sudden forks. We wait until the worst has passed and scurry through ankle-deep water to Bistro de Pere Nicolas, where we are welcomed by an apologetic chef (not surprisingly, we are the only customers, the rest of the sensible world having sought the relative safety of their own hearths): hot food only a possibility until the first electricity cut (the power goes off as we are looking at the menu) so we feast on a delicious cold starter, followed by a ‘tartine’ of our choice – a sandwich, effectively – by candlelight, of course. There is more art: in Le Gohazé, for example, Anna Deguelle’s ‘Melancolia’, a reinterpretation of Dürer’s 16th century engraving, inspired by the wooden ladder propped diagonally on the end wall of its Notre-Dame de Joie home. It’s a complex and thought-provoking piece: Deguelle has taken apart the original, separating out its component parts and representing many of these – the measuring tools, the geometric shapes – as objects on a large golden paper spread on the stone floor. There are smaller golden shapes fixed apparently randomly on the white walls – these flutter in the air – and small glass bulbs. Chemical flasks? Teardrops? Deguelle’s huge but deliberately faint re-drawing of Dürer’s original matches the gold rectangle on the floor in size though not orientation, and there are three short videos. Two are on small screen opposite the main exhibit. One of these shows children (from a Pontivy school, we learnt at the Round Table discussion) exploring a life-size version of Dürer’s magic square, the other titled ‘Melancolia Thelma’ follows a young girl – presumably ‘Thelma’? – approaching the chapel, studying the original and, by implication, the nature of melancholy, and finally assuming the pose of the central figure in the engraving, chin on hand. Between these two, a larger projection moves between clouded and night skies and an airport with shadowy figures among the planes. An oddly appropriate fairground version of ‘The Last Waltz’ drifts in through the open door from the fête outside as we watch. Afterwards, ice creams by the river. We spend days at the beach in Étel under clear skies and fierce sun, with lots of swimming to stay cool, and two-nation refreshments: bread, cheese and wine for lunch and tea and ginger nuts at – well, at tea time. The air is loud with skylarks as we walk through the cotton grass, and sand martins dart in and out of their burrows in the dunes at our backs as we laze in the sunshine. One evening we eat in the tuna restaurant, which offers 80 tuna recipes on a kind of rota system. From those available I pick a tomato-heavy but tasty ceviche – needless to say it doesn’t quite match up to Juana’s Peruvian version. We are also lucky to coincide again with the annual sardines grillées celebration where the fishermen cook the fish and the wives (yes!) make the desserts and serve at table and hundreds pack into the old criée or auction house to enjoy the feast. After supper we wander back along the quay as the sun goes down and bump into the owner of the chambre d’hôtes where we are staying for the night. It’s a remarkable little house, furnished apparently entirely with antiques and quirky to say the least. She tells us she was born in the house and her sister lives two doors up the street. Her father used to fish out of the front window. She more than matches our enthusiasm for Étel: it’s simpa, she says, très simpa, and the people – Carnac, La Trinité, you can keep ‘em – in Étel les gens sont vrais. We agree. Sadly we have to leave the seaside early, courtesy of a stray passing bug which picks me out from the crowd and sets my temperature soaring and – well, I’ll spare you the details. So the usual list of last times will have to be next times: the bar (we’re almost regulars now),the Bon Repos Sunday market, the pile of films which grows faster than we can watch, the cycle ride to Caurel to view Sue’s glass work and Val’s new bar. I miss the tree creeper, the humming-bird moth, the first cinnabar. And I haven’t done justice to the way the garden is evolving so beautifully under Nick and Di’s care: there’s a new heuchera, and we enjoy a steady supply of young courgettes and salad leaves, and basil for the tomatoes. At dusk it’s particularly lovely, with lace-caps glowing in the evening light. We’ve not made quite as much headway with mapping our memories as we’d hoped: partly the heat, partly illness – and partly the year 1970. I got on quietly enough with mine, but that being the year where ‘everything happened’ for Nick and Di – that made for many discussions and revisions! We’ve talked at length, too, about the process of remembering – Charles Fernyhough is very interesting on this: memory is ‘selective, fragile and easily fooled’, he says, and ‘doesn’t record our lives like a video camera’. Each remembering is a reconstruction, in fact. No wonder it’s so hard. We made some progress, though: thanks to Nick, there’s even evidence of the process at work. And I’m still hoping for a last swim in the silky waters of the lake… We’ve made it to the other side and back a time or two – once more would be nice, to add to the new memories to take back. Thank you Di, Nick – & Brittany. Kate was staying with friends at Laundroanec, near Mur-de-Bretagne.
She read Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters, Elizabeth Taylor’s Palladian and Elizabeth Bowen’s To the North Films: The Tango Lesson, Aguirre Wrath of God, Pina Bausch Dancing Dreams, Coffee & cigarettes, Le Quattro Volte, Dreams of a Life Charles Fernyhough wrote Pieces of Light: the New Science of Memory (Profile, 2012) This month, having managed to borrow a little more time to complete the residency project, what do I do but grab a flight across The Channel for a few weeks’ truancy in Brittany? Not quite a second home – or should that be third? – perhaps, but familiar ground. Several pre-breakfast swims already, though we haven’t made it right across the lake yet, and hours of such hot sun that I’ve found myself creeping into the shade like an overheated Labrador. A slightly odd coming together of disparate strands this time: lots of TV Wimbledon in what I’ve grown used to as a non-sporting environment, and of course yesterday evening we cheer Argentina all the way to defeat. Earlier in the World Cup story, one of our first outings is to Pontivy to attend a round table exploration with some of the artists in the annual art-in-the-chapels programme: a stiff two hours’ concentration on the debate, all in French of course, and almost understanding a little less than half. Then coffee in our favourite bar, mysteriously buzzing until we discover that the kick-off in the France-Germany quarter final is only minutes away. Difficult not to resort to national stereotypes: an eminently civilised football crowd and an unashamedly intellectual discussion both strikingly different from what we believe would be the English equivalent. My spirits sink further with the weather: when we leave the bar, clear skies and fierce sun have given way to the burnt smell of summer rain. And, with a complete lack of generosity, the news that Eimear McBride has won yet another literary prize makes me poor company I fear on the drive home – hard to imagine that I will ever be credited with changing the face of fiction. The following day we drive along the lake through a Welsh hill fret to Gouarec where Marilyn le Moign has opened her garden in aid of the Bon Repos Abbey restoration fund. The garden of her house, a modest Breton mansion in the rue au lin, is a good mix of formal lines in lawn and clipped box and yew and more informal combinations in the mixed beds, a pleasure even in the dismal rain that digs in for the afternoon. The path in is lightened by a high flier which behaves like a climbing hydrangea but appears to be a tiny-flowered rose – ‘rambling rector, I think’ I hear from a passing visitor. As the garden opens to our view, ahead is a long bed, predominantly pinks – wonderfully fizzy and frivolous astilbe, roses and geranium and the ubiquitous hydrangea – offset with fiery berberis and day lilies. The path winds round alongside the river, beside fern and gunnera and bamboo and large-leaved hosta. We discover the charming Lysimachia clethroides, gooseneck loosestrife, its slender white flower spikes curved in parallel, small pennants blown back in a breeze. We dawdle by a narrow shallow stretch of water with a geometric slate base, squeeze into the tiny Japanese garden and admire the way the huge trees beyond the boundary provide the perfect backdrop to the garden itself. Then we take refuge under the canopy for tea and cake, watching the rain: very English. The first ten days here are dogged by Britishness, both in the weather – enough rain that even those perfect early mornings and the odd burst of searing sun don’t quite obliterate the memory – and in the company at a grand dinner at the house of compatriots in Keriven, a couple of villages along the lake. There are childhood echoes, too: Di and I are busy with our ‘Mapping Memory’ Project which has Di back in Harrow and me up the road in 1950s Wembley. I write fast, in a hurry to escape those early suburban days. Meanwhile Nick stalks the garden with his air rifle, a Mr McGregor in a range of sunhats, on the trail of the rabbits who are eating their way through all his plantings. The garden anchors us sweetly in the here and now: startling cobalt in a spreading buddleia and the beautiful hydrangea macrophylla normalis, bursts of fire in nasturtium and marigold and the fat hips of the rugosa rose at this end of the drive, the vibrant colours of anemone and cornflower and rose campion Lychnis coronaria, also known rather charmingly as Bridget-in-her-bravery. The thick woolly leaves were once used as lamp wicks, contributing to the genus name, from the Greek lychnos, meaning lamp. The epithet coronaria probably means crown, although some regard it as a corruption of champagne, the French for country. And the pretty rose Souvenir de la Malmaison has scrambled up the front of the house almost to my bedroom window. When we’re not busy lazing around here, we head off to view some of the art interventions in the chapels which pepper the local landscape. Clear favourite so far is Matthieu Pilaud’s extraordinary ‘H.A.M. et Laika’, two massive pine structures, each with a cold metal heart suspended within the skeleton, representing the Cold War between Russia and the USA. The larger of the two in the transept is open enough to climb into and inspect the stainless steel panels of the heart or look up through the bones of the frame to the painted ceiling of the chapel itself. This chapel is dedicated to St Noyale whose story is depicted in the ceiling panels. Arriving in Brittany from England in search of a life serving God, she was beheaded by a local chief when she refused to marry him and carried her severed head to her final resting place. Another star in the firmament of Catholic legend is the virgin martyr St Appoline, whose torture included having all her teeth pulled out. She is often shown, as in the Chapelle Saints Drédeno, between two men, one wielding a gigantic pair of pliers. Some mornings we cycle into Mur for a coffee or a glass of wine in Bar Le Rockwell, our persistence paying off in greetings from the regulars, or wander round the Friday evening market when the whole area it seems spills into the town to chat and eat and drink, watching those brave enough to try abseiling down the church tower or sitting on the steps to listen to the band. We meet Joseph, the eighty-year-old previous owner of the house, another chap called Leonard who, after the traditional greeting, apologises for his stubbly chin. All the talk is of the new mayor, another neighbour of ours apparently. It’s a struggle to make sense of the accent, even though conversations are often at near-shouting pitch, but it’s all exuberantly good-humoured. Later, in the creperie for supper, ours are the only English voices. …according to Janice Galloway, to keep breathing. The easiest thing in the world, you would think, although anyone prone to asthma or panic attacks will tell you otherwise. So Viola tricolour – the wild pansy commonly known as heartsease – would have been a welcome sight for the seventeenth century sufferer from bronchitis or respiratory problems. Culpeper, in his herbal of 1653, wasn’t impressed, dismissing it as ‘cold, viscous and slimy’, although he did concede it was an ‘excellent cure for the French pox’. He preferred its cousin the violet, a ‘fine pleasing plant of Venus, of a mild nature, no way hurtful’ and saw its cooling properties as invaluable in the treatment of ‘pains in the head, choleric humours, quinsy, pleurisy, hot rheums, hoarseness in the throat, the heat and sharpness of urine… and for the piles also, being fried with yolks of eggs and applied thereto’. Well. I’m fascinated by the relationship between gardens, health and healing. Cambridge’s botanic garden, in common with similar institutions the world over, began life as a small physic garden, growing herbaceous plants for use in the training of medical students, so I was excited to visit the Royal College of Physicians garden on the edge of Regent’s Park yesterday as part of London’s Open Garden Squares Weekend for a taste of this early history. I joined a brisk tour which pointed out the usual suspects – Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade, and Scrophularia nodosa, figwort, for example. According to the Royal College’s plant database, Culpeper believed figwort was good for haemmorhoids too – not surprising perhaps since ‘fig’ (from Latin ‘fica’) also (from Middle English ‘fike’ or ‘fyke’, Old English ‘fic’) had a secondary meaning of ‘venereal ulcers’ or piles. A further benefit offered by figwort, according to Culpeper: it ‘being hung about the neck preserves the body in health’. The garden was redeveloped in 2005 and now contains over 1300 plants from the history of medicine. The Royal College of Physicians headquarters, an iconic modernist building designed by Denys Lasdun and opened in 1964, houses offices, a museum and conference centre. Inside, I discovered a further treat in the shape of ‘Pharmapoetica: a dispensary of poetry’, the result of a collaborative project between poet Chris McCabe and artist and herbalist Maria Vlotides. The ‘dispensary’, a metal-framed, glazed cabinet, about 20 inches in height, contains several identical stoppered glass jars on two shelves. Inside each, a particular plant, herb or seed – I remember sage, wormwood, a bundle of daisies – used pharmacologically. Pasted to the outside of each jar, a printed copy of a poem in response to its contents, in the context of the poet’s relationship with his young son. Maria explained how the installation has developed into an exhibition of photographs and showed me the accompanying book which contains images of the installation and working notes on which the poems are based. The book unfolds into a kind of double spread so that you can see text and image side by side. I was captivated by the whole thing, combining as it does my interest in plants, healing and writing and immediately stretched my itinerary to include the Poetry Café on Betterton Street for the final day of the exhibition. I was very sorry to find it closed, though fortunately the book is available from Pedestrian Publishing’s website (details below) where I found this perfect summary of the project: ‘the alchemical and transformative processes of language and its meaning through poetry mirrored by the alchemical and transformative process of plants into medicinal drugs’. The rest of the day saw me sampling the delights and idiosyncrasies of some half a dozen London squares. I began in the formal grandeur of Park Square, designed by John Nash at the beginning of the nineteenth century as a ‘sort of vestibule’ to the new Regent’s Park. This allowed me to take the ‘Nursemaids’ Tunnel’ under the Marylebone Road into Park Crescent gardens. Then a zigzag across my old student stamping grounds (is that really the same café-cum-corner-shop on Howland Street where we used to buy samosas?) onto Gower Street and a glass of wine by the fishpond behind the Academy Hotel, before a look at Bedford Square. Named after the Dukes of Bedford who owned most of the land in Bloomsbury the square, including its oval garden, was designed as a whole, is still surrounded by the original Georgian terraces and retains its Victorian ‘Chinese’ pavilion. It was also uniquely lucky to keep its elliptical wrought iron railings during World War Two, due apparently to the ‘defiant pacifism’ of the twelfth Duke. A decade of English Heritage funded improvements, including a broad gravel apron around the garden itself, sees it lovingly restored From here, past the British Museum, across Russell Square and through Queen Square to the lovely little courtyard garden tucked away behind the October Gallery on Old Gloucester Street and then, in complete contrast, the Phoenix Garden, the ‘best-kept secret of London’s West End’ according to the Open Garden Squares Weekend guidebook. Created by volunteers in 1984 in an old car park, this community garden hosts a range of wildlife (including the West End’s only frogs) in a profusion of flowering plants: an absolute delight. Now in its seventeenth year, the Open Garden Squares Weekend was originally intended to draw attention to the contribution that the green spaces made to the capital and the importance of their conservation. Last year saw a record 17,000 visitors, testament to the public recognition of the importance of these urban breathing spaces. A trip to London earlier in the week took me out on the Piccadilly line to Barons Court and through the Margravine Cemetery to Charing Cross Hospital, for a long overdue visit to the Maggie garden, designed by Dan Pearson. I first heard of the Maggie centres, and in particular of the London garden, just over a year ago, predating my own brush with cancer. Maggie Keswick Jencks gave her name to these centres, having been diagnosed with terminal cancer herself and recognising the need for a new approach to care that would provide emotional and psychological support, reassurance and control for those facing the disease and aiming above all, in her own words, ‘not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying’. In the meantime I’d grown to admire the landscape design and writing of Dan Pearson, so I was keen to see how his vision of the healing potential of gardens worked here. The Centre is orange, the least soothing colour you might think, but it’s unmissable, almost magnetic in its pull. In contrast to the sharp corners and cuboid shape of the centre itself, a track winds through shrubs to the entrance (‘the embrace of an arm that gradually envelops visitors’ is how Pearson described it in an early interview). Already the overwhelming impression is green. Inside is – well, like being outside, in that wherever you turn there is greenery, except that the unremitting roar of the capital’s traffic is muffled. And if for greenery you’re thinking potted plants, forget it: Pearson’s design has literally brought the outside in, over two floors and on an outdoor scale: towering bamboos, soaring magnolias. Each corner of the building has a distinct flavour in its plantings, and a table and a chair or two should you wish to linger. There are huge square containers of lavenders and creeping rosemaries; a fig valiantly struggling for fruit; a stunning feathery Albizia julibrissin, the Chinese tree of happiness I learn later. Ferns and Tetrapanax interrupt the decking. The interior is further softened with louvred wood, stones, books and sculptures by Hannah Bennett. Were there candles? If not, you’ll understand perhaps that there was an impression of candles. I’d made the journey to see the garden itself, but the impact of this sanctuary was also due to the people I met there and the welcome I received from the moment I put my head round the door. ‘It’s for you, the centre,’ Sue said as I tried to explain a ‘professional’ interest – which of course, as I discovered, it was. If, like the first ‘Maggie’, you are hoping for more than just keeping breathing, this centre or those like it might be a good place to start. [Thanks to all at the Maggie Centre in Charing Cross Hospital, Maria Vlotides, Open Garden Squares Weekend & The Royal College of Physicians’ Garden of Medicinal Plants http://garden.rcplondon.ac.uk/]
Pharmapoetica: a dispensary of poetry available from www.pedestrianpublishing.com Janice Galloway: The Trick is to Keep Breathing (1989) So the weather for the start of Chelsea week was heavenly, seeming to ‘teeter miraculously between spring and summer’ according to Dan Pearson in the weekend’s Observer. Furious with myself for missing the chance of a ticket, I prowl the Botanic Garden looking for solace, and of course there’s plenty. The meadow plantings in front of Cory Lodge and at the eastern end of the garden suddenly burst into colour. Lovely iris are still very much in evidence, pale mauve Iris pallida and Iris sibirica ‘Caesar’s brother’ (I can’t find an explanation for the common name) jostling for space with the cobalt and white spears of Camassia leichtlinii, myriad grasses and new green foliage and the ubiquitous Anthriscus sylvestris – cow parsley – also known as wild chervil, wild beaked parsley, keck and Queen Ann’s lace. According to Mike McCarthy, writing in The Independent, cow parsley is experiencing a boom, at the expense of other species which used to grace our hedgerows, largely due to soil improvements – apparently many wild flowers thrive in infertile soil. Whilst it may look pretty, it’s a monoculture and as such disappointingly one-dimensional. The Chelsea garden I’m most sorry to have missed is Sophie Walker’s Cave Pavilion. Sophie, the youngest woman in history to design a Chelsea garden, was inspired to study horticulture while travelling in Bolivia. Her garden, designed to emulate a ‘dreamlike jungle Eden’ was described by one commentator as ‘a rainforest in a giant Perspex box’, with a viewing window at one end. The structure, says Dan Pearson, is a ‘21st century take on the Wardian case’, the kind of portable mini-greenhouse used by 19th century plant hunters to transport plants from their native habitats. The plants, supplied by Sue and Bleddyn Wynn-Jones of Crûg Farm Plants, included new species and one genus completely new to cultivation, Uocodendron whartonii, which they discovered in 2003 in Taiwan. This is apparently the first Chelsea garden where the plants are fully traceable, each having its own collection number, and is designed to raise awareness of international plant conservation. I caught a television interview with the Wynn-Joneses, who spoke about the importance of plant-hunting, both historically – many of the plants we assume are native species come from China, for example – and now, for plant conservation. In many cases it’s a question of getting in before the bulldozers, they suggested, preventing the loss of species before we even know we have them. The Bank Holiday weekend sees me off on the trail of E.H. ‘Chinese’ Wilson (see February post ‘Where’er you walk’) whose intrepid journeys provided the seeds for rhododendrons at Norfolk’s Sheringham Park. I persuade my long-suffering brother to take a break from his regular birding routes and we brave the crowds to see the results of EHW’s expeditions. In many ways they are spectacular: great banks of colour, from deep crimsons and purples to delicate pinks and whites, and opportunities for the long view from the top of a series of viewing towers. Possible to imagine for a moment standing in the foothills of the Himalayas and seeing such a sight for the first time – were it not for the hordes of holiday-makers/pushchairs/dogs all on the same mission. And where were the species? Or the plant labels? The plant history? Humphry Repton’s garden design was the subject of a small exhibition in the visitor centre – an intriguing quirk of his process was to produce a ‘red book’ for each of his designs with explanatory text and watercolour illustrations with an overlay to show ‘before’ and ‘after’ views – but nothing about Wilson or the plants, and a brief paragraph only in the guide on sale in the shop. I suppose that’s a good reminder of the different priorities in a National Trust visitor centre, and a university botanic garden with an emphasis on the science. At any rate, I found myself as usual preferring the incidentals – sunlight through saplings in the wood or the architecture of the twisted trunks – rather than the main show. And what a relief to get back to the less peopled salt marshes and shingle shore of Cley and Salthouse! Never thought I’d be so glad to see a sandwich tern! My own travels recently have taken me to Norwich, twice. On Saturday I was delighted to be reading in Words and Women’s garden festival in the city’s beautiful Plantation Garden, a Victorian gem restored in the 1980s – well worth investigating if you haven’t seen it. I wasn’t able to stay for the whole event, but loved Lois Williams’ reflections on the gooseberry and Anna Mudeka’s wonderful Zimbabwean music – what a voice! Now London is next on my list: in particular the Open Garden Squares Weekend (14-15 June) when over 200 garden squares will be open to the public. According to Jo Thompson, whose London Square Garden won a gold award at Chelsea, it’s the capital’s gardens that keep us breathing. There is also a magical secret garden feel to these spaces: I remember Sunday afternoons when I lived in Woburn Square as a student, letting ourselves into the garden with a residents’ key, and this reminds me of Cambridge Botanics’ own quaint tradition of the Sunday key holders. And back to London, towards the end of next month a chance to hear Dan Pearson and Tom Heatherwick talk about their fantastic Garden Bridge project, as part of the Seeding the City initiative. My most recent adventures were closer to home: a day’s walk in full sun over the cliffs to Sheringham, the air shrill with skylarks over drifts of the lovely sea thrift Armeria maritima then inland along wooded lanes to Cromer. And on Sunday evening I passed up on an invitation to hear quail singing (good decision: they didn’t) but went along with the outing to look for nightjar. We set out just before sunset under an almost cloudless sky, along lanes whose verges were crowded – yes, with cow parsley. The challenges for conservation were echoed as we drove past Sandringham Park, the flat purple of Rhododendron ponticum stacked and towering either side of the road. The origins of this ‘British rhododendron’ are unclear. What is certain is that the Victorian taste for the exotic led to the spread of a plant which will out-compete most native species and hence is responsible for the destruction of native habitats. In contrast, our destination: Dersingham Bog Nature Reserve. I have to admit my heart sank as we set off down the track in the cold near-dark and what looked like wasteland materialised in the dusk before us. We joined a handful of other seekers and at least a million hungry midges and whispered and loitered. And loitered. Eventually, the call – a mechanical trrrrrrr trrrrrrrr – and occasional flurries of sotto voce excitement, – "flying left coming towards us now, left, flying right"... I saw – an unidentified bird miles high and far away, which might have corresponded to Andy’s description of the nightjar’s ‘floppy’ flight, and the briefest flash of something lightish in the darkness. Oh, and the insectivorous sundew: yes there really is such a plant, alive and well in the Dersingham bog. In fact, Drosera (commonly known as the sundews) comprises one of the largest genera of carnivorous plants, with at least 194 species. If there were a photograph, it would be of a kneeling human figure, bottom raised heavenward in the gloaming, nose down beneath the duckboard, peering at a tiny rash of red dots poking out of the marshy ground. If April is the cruellest month – and according to Eliot it is – then May is the purplest, at least in my book. And there’s nothing understated about purple. In the Botanic Gardens the gaudy pompoms of the allium are standing tall in rose garden and the bee beds and the first of the foxgloves Digitalis purpurea are suddenly open and are as tall as I am. Aquilegia and Ajuga reptans vie for attention. And iris, all shapes and sizes and shades. The raised beds in front of the café are punctuated with the dusky furls of Iris barbata ‘Sable’. The name Iris, from the Greek goddess of the rainbow, reflects the range of colours found in the many species. And, since Iris also linked Mount Olympus with the mortal world, perhaps the name places the plant somewhere between earth and heaven. The genus was the subject of a monograph by Richard Irwin Lynch, Curator of the Garden from 1879 until 1919. The Book of the Iris, published in 1904, had the twofold aim: to offer ‘all the useful information on culture’ and to provide ‘an easy and efficient means for the verification of names’. In his preface Lynch thanks ‘Mr. E. Allard, my foreman of the Indoor Department’ for ‘almost all the photographs’ and ends with a quotation from The Winter’s Tale: All faults I make, when I shall come to know them I do repent. In the Glasshouse Range the extraordinary jade vine Strongylodon macrobotrys has its signature blue-green flowers exploding from hanging purple racemes just now. The Botanics’ specimen is one of the best-flowering in Britain. Clearly a member of the Fabaceae (pea) family – see the claw-like flowers – in its native Philippines it reaches more than 20 metres in height, though extensive deforestation has made it vulnerable to extinction. The vine is pollinated by bats, probably attracted by the ‘luminosity of the flowers in the tropical twilight’ according to the Garden’s own notes. The bats hang upside down on the purple stems to feed on the nectar. Another member of the pea family, Hardenbergia violacea is also in flower on the north wall of the glasshouse corridor: look for its sprays of small, intensely lavender flowers with two lime green spots in the centre. Common names of this Australian climber include purple coral pea and happy wanderer Outside, the branches of the Judas Tree Cercis siliquastrum in the Gilbert Carter Memorial Area are packed with pinky-mauve flowers. And then there’s wisteria, not just in the Botanics but spilling over college walls and house fronts all over Cambridge, palest mauve to vibrant purple, filling the air with its scents. Within the garden it drips off the Brookside building above the shop, whilst the group of free-standing Wisteria sinensis near the Judas Tree is covered in long arching tails of flowers, the characteristic pea-shape of upper banner, wings and keel clearly visible in each floret. Loveliest is the elderly shrub near the stand of mixed lilac: its wrinkled limbs and faded flowers sprawl comfortably in its wadding of cow parsley, the weight of its flower clusters matched by the upward thrust of the neighbouring lilacs, their combined fragrances a delicious mix. There wasn’t much purple in evidence last weekend when I strayed back to my other life in Cumbria for a joint fiftieth party, although our brush with fame added a bit of a shine. Simon met me off the train, and introduced me to the only other alighting passenger. My friend Mark, he said. I recognised him, of course, just couldn’t quite place him. I asked him if he’d come far. The celebration began with a walk, a group of twelve or so retracing the circular path we’d trodden with our children so many times. For those new to the area, this was a first meeting. So this is a tarn, Mark said, looking out across our northern waters. We walked and talked, then back to the house for tea and cake and conversation. Do you think he’s the most famous person ever to be in the Lacy Thompson Hall? Nancy says. I guess so, I say. It’s the evening do and our faces almost collide and then veer apart amongst the other grizzled heads moving to the snappy rhythms of the band. Too loud anyway to confess that I can’t put a name to this familiar face even though I’ve spent the afternoon in his company. Later, I wander to the back of the hall in search of a drink. Is it really him? Chris says. Tom says it is. She whispers the name with reverence and of course as soon as I hear it it’s obvious. It really is, I say, enjoying the reflected celebrity. He’s Simon’s best friend. I told you, Tom says. Now he’s on stage, he remains until the end of the set, alternately strutting his stuff with the other fiftyish celebrants and skulking with concentration on the sidelines in what might be a particularly tricky riff. In the dark red dark of the flashing lights, his presence adds a kind of glamour on the bare staging: he’s big, muscled in his black T-shirt, all style and cool with his shiny guitar slung low and his unmistakeable hair. The hall is bare, apart from a square of patterned fabric on the back wall behind the band. I like the juxtaposition of The Clash with the quilting, Nancy says. We bounce on, a heady mix of old friends and old music reminding us how we have loved and not quite lost over the years; and he’s there on stage still, letting us believe for an hour or two that our loyalty has paid off and we’ve all made it into the warm glow. The following morning Chris returns from the shop, her tiny granddaughter strapped to her chest. Aimee’s beside herself, she says. She’s his Number One fan. She knows all about him – she’s done a project on him and everything. Guess who was in the village hall yesterday evening? I said to her. Have you heard of him? She’s desperate to meet him. Do you think he’d come up here to see her? The morning erupts in a flurry of emails and phone calls, interspersed with elaborate fantasies about the village acquiring its own notoriety on Facebook and Twitter. Eventually, Aimee is whisked away from the Co-op – I’m still in my uniform, she says – and into Pete’s car. We leave Chris standing in for her and hurtle down the hill. We don’t have long: Aimee’s shift in the pub begins at 12. Our arrival is breathless. There’s a terrible moment when I think we might have overstepped the mark and broken some code of privacy or respect. But he comes out of the kitchen and steps smartly up to her expectations. There’s a lovely photo of the two of them in the hallway, worlds apart in more than geography and years, Aimee looking up at him and he, arms folded, returning her gaze. Laughter, chatter, cameras clicking. Then Aimee is back in the pumpkin, Nancy arrives with tulips, Mark sets off for the first of his five trains home and the party returns to the serious business of celebrating Simon and Ginny’s birthdays. The following afternoon, heading east along the lovely South Tyne valley to pick up a southbound train, I sift through the pictures in my head: afternoon light on the tarn and the blaze of gorse, the excitement of the band’s double finale, ‘Teenage Kicks’ romping neatly into my all-time Ramones favourite ‘Sheena is…’, and a glitter of stardust settling for a few moments on the roofs and fields of Hallbankgate. Into April and the delicious newness and freshness so precisely described by Laurie Lee coincides predictably, for me, with a dip in spirits. Still, the garden is at its loveliest, sprinklings of buttery yellow cowslips and the first bluebells hurrying to join the party. Fine weather and school holidays mean that there are children everywhere. They’re better at being in the moment than us; they scamper, yell, chase, squeal, kick, leap, taunt, squabble, demand, chuckle, wail or complain without restraint or self-consciousness – a free rein of delight or dismay, whilst we gather the paraphernalia of our days, check our lists, sweat or shiver, loiter irresolute or hurry by. A toddler sits in a patch of stone chippings with a plastic cup, scoops in a handful of the stones and attempts to trickle them over her head. They spill down her arm and over her shoulder. She tries again, and again, never quite there. Her mother – I guess this is her mother – approaches with an invitation to lunch but the stones are more interesting. Now the woman fetches a morsel from her plate and slips it into her daughter’s mouth, and another. Eventually she picks up the child and puts her in a high chair. She places a plastic cup with an inch of water in the bottom within reach. At once the girl makes an arrowhead of her fingers and dips them into the water, up-ending the cup so that the water spills along her arm and onto the surface of the table. She pats a hand into the spilled water. Her mum replaces the water and watches for the sparrow mouth to open, popping in a crumb whenever there’s an opportunity; meanwhile, the pouring lesson proceeds. The morning slides into lunch-time; young voices clamour & whine for baked potatoes or ice cream. The beds in front of me are a jostle of new green uprights punctuated with magenta and scarlet tulips. The espalier etches its way up Cory Lodge’s wall to the roof. Beyond, on the mound of the limestone garden, a girl in pink runs into view and out again, then a boy in a sea-green top, then a brick-red scuttle. Adults drift across the lawn beneath a froth of blossom. Two blondes with bare shoulders pause to criticise an absent friend. The grandparents at the next table grumble on about good behaviour. Pete Michna strides past, a fancy-dress angel in his bee-keeping gear, the mask set back in a halo. Five minutes later he reappears in shorts and boots, normal service resumed. After lunch, I escape the café’s hubbub and scout the garden for the latest delights. Beneath the magnolias, petals lie like curls of paper on the soil. I dawdle by the brazen glow of Kerria japonica, named after William Kerr who introduced it in 1804, Jenny Uglow tells me. I interrupt a private moment between a pair of ladybirds and disturb a busy bumble bee. The pink buds of the Malus, the delicate white flowers of Rhodotypos scandens and the curious Parrotiopsis jaquemontii all detain me for a while. And the first of the paeonies are in flower – the stunning boudoir-pink Paeonia clusii from Crete. What holds my attention, though, are the triffids of the garden, the Crown Imperials, Fritillaria imperialis. Towering, fleshy, with gaudy orange or yellow ruffs and spiked crowns, they are extraordinary; impressive, but also faintly ludicrous. Someone must love them for their gawky grandeur. Clare Leighton sounds affectionate when she mentions her ‘royal clump… flowering on their tall straight stalks’. Beth Chatto describes them as ‘fascinating’. They flourish in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Himalayan foothills. In the northern hemisphere, I read, they flower in late spring with a ‘foxy odour’ – how did I miss this? – which repels mice and moles. For me, they are the stuff of nightmares. It doesn’t take much imagining to see them shaking the earth off their roots and striding menacingly towards me. Like other members of the lily family (these are lilies?!) they are ‘susceptible to depredation by the scarlet lily beetle’. So says Wikipedia. I’ve had enough. En route to the exit, I pass Pete Michna in a reverse transformation – if it is Pete: shrouded in white and crouching over a hive, it could be anyone – and then there, in the long grass near the Brookside gate, the snakeshead fritillary, Fritillaria meleagris, as enchanting as its cousin is charmless and ‘one of the most exquisite jewels in the treasure house of British wild flowers’ according to the RHS. Then to Norfolk for a few days of heavenly weather, clear skies (’blown bubble-film of blue’ is Lee’s description) and warm sun, though the wind is chill. I enjoy an eye-streaming march along East Banks to Cley beach, the wind at my back as I walk the crash and scrape of the incoming tide, the shingle bank to my left reduced to an untidy crust, the bite of the winter’s stormy seas still visible in the stones. We loiter in front of the shelter for an impromptu competition to hit a lump of peat with thrown pebbles, then to the deli for ice cream and back along the Chosely road, looking for birds of course: the ring ouzel eludes a second glimpse and the lumbering hares of the drive out are no longer about. Over the coming days we see wheatear and blackcap, yellow wagtail and red kite, and hear wren and chiffchaff, willow warbler and skylark. I learn that the chaffinch finishes its song with a twirly flourish. And there are swallows, a promise of summer. I leave Andy to head off in search of spoonbills – I have seen spoonbills. ‘But these are breeding,’ Andy says. Later, driving past Peter Melchett's cowslip fields, we chat about what it is that excites us in the natural world. Mike McCarthy, environmentalist, writer and all-round guru, apparently has a theory that our response to nature – should that be ‘Nature’? – is a four-part attraction, the fourth part being ‘rarity’. Andy says for him this is key: a rarity unseen is a challenge he’s driven to meet - it becomes a quest, in fact. He suggests this might be a male thing. I’m not sure – there have been female birders and plant hunters, I know, though perhaps not as many. Our morning had begun with a chat about stories and their characters. I found myself, as usual, defending my preference for the Harry Potter series against, for example, Pullman’s ‘Dark Materials’ sequence, generally regarded, it seems, as ‘better’. It’s really imaginative,’ Tom said. ‘There’s this parallel universe, and…’ Immediately I feel my attention drift into that glazed-over, half-awake state that usually signifies Jack’s football chatter: honestly (sorry, Jack!) I’m just not that interested. Give me a comfortable adventure through what quickly becomes familiar territory, any time. As we drive home, I wonder if this impulse is what makes our taste in literature so different. For me, what matters most is some sense of ownership: somehow I need to feel this place or bird or flower – or story – is in some way mine before I can make that emotional engagement. This corner of Norfolk is – well, it’s Andy’s territory but it’s become as familiar to me as my own back yard – more so, in fact. The hedgerows bustling with the new green of Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum), bare fields gouged with a giant comb in the long shadows of the late afternoon: these are the beauties of home. Another guru, Auden said ‘We can only love what-/ever we possess’. I’m wondering if this is the spanner in the horticultural works for me: that the botanic garden will always be someone else’s ground. Reading: 'April RIse' by Laurie Lee
A Little History of British Gardening by Jenny Uglow (Pimlico: London 2005) ... the garden path Days of warm sun last week have made way for a colder snap , with snow on the fells for a Cumbrian visit last weekend and now a punishing hailstorm, the hail falling vertically with such force that it bounces up immediately again before returning to earth and coating beds and table tops with a frosting of snow. The gardens are spectacular just now, though, magnolias creamy white or a sultry crimson, and Housman's ‘loveliest of trees’ the cherry: don't miss the Yoshino cherry on the lawn in front of the glasshouses, a froth of blossom fizzing with bumble bees. The deft blue of Pulmonaria is popping up here and there, too. The scientific name is derived from the Latin pulmo, lung. The spotted oval leaves of Pulmonaria officinalis were thought to symbolize diseased, ulcerated lungs, and so were used to treat pulmonary infections. The common name in many languages also refers to lungs, as in the English "lungwort". Colloquial names include soldiers and sailors, spotted dog, Joseph and Mary, Jerusalem cowslip and Bethlehem sage. ... the dance floor I spent much of last week preparing a poster to take to the Barker Research Lab/Brain Repair Centre Parkinson’s Open Day on Saturday. Although we had collected the data years ago, it proved a laborious and time-consuming job, and not without its collateral damage – cross purposes, strained relationships, enthusiasms which generated yet more information to absorb and respond to. Worth it, I think, though: the rather beautiful finished object generated some interest amongst the scientists and more amongst the audience of people-with-Parkinson’s and their carers, and it seemed a good opportunity to revisit the topic. It didn’t create the stir I’d fantasised about – no researcher from the Wellcome Trust with time on her hands and a pot of money to spend – but a reminder of what we’d achieved – what, two years ago? – and an opportunity to rally the troops, perhaps, or at least poke at the thing with a stick to see if it (the project, the book) is dead in the water, or not. I do hope not. Is it time perhaps to reconsider the self-publishing options? Meanwhile a ‘first person’ article on tango and Parkinson’s for a magazine in Newcastle (Australia) is ready to send, along with a selection of photos. ... the train window… From the Open Day, a bus to the station and a series of trains north for a 60th birthday party in the Dacre Hall at Lanercost – how many years since I first celebrated there? The Cambridge countryside blurred by; a biting wet wind greeted us in Peterborough. The next leg passed peacefully and then we were in Newcastle (UK) & its Central Station, the Centurion bar a high-volume crush of post-match celebrants and pre-evening roisterers. I was mistaken in thinking the slow train towards Carlisle would provide a bit of calm before the hubbub that was bound to be Nicky’s birthday bash: I arrived on Platform 6 to find the train already packed – seats full and the aisles jammed with passengers – and tickets being checked as we boarded. Turned out this was the ‘curry train’, also known as the ‘Passage to India’, transporting getting on for 100 very smart diners I should think to the Valley Indian Restaurant on Corbridge Station platform. The waiter (formal dress, broad Geordie accent) squeezed through the crowd taking orders (no aperitifs sadly since the train company recently banned alcohol on Saturday evenings on that route.) ... 'Medburn' Sunday morning: the snow gone from Milton village where I am staying with my good friend Debbie, thankfully on the mend after a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage just before Christmas, but we can see the snow-topped cliffs of Steel Rigg in the distance along Hadrian's Wall as we head out for a stroll round the block. For once the skies are blue, the sun is up and there are new lambs: a delight to be in Cumbria on such a morning (especially when we hear it's a grey day in Cambridge). ... the writer's table. I've also had a few outings recently which remind me that I’m supposed to be writing full time: an enjoyable evening with Meldreth Writers’ Group yesterday and today’s ‘Writing the Wild’ workshop at the Cambridge Art Salon; also a lovely afternoon with Juliet Day from the Botanic Garden and hosted by Words in Walden, where a welcoming audience listened to us talk gardens and stories and I had an opportunity to share some of what I’ve written as writer in residence. The image I used there to describe the feeling of being overwhelmed by a plethora of inspirations – a mass of wires leading out from my head in a million different directions, each begging to have its story pursued and caught –has stayed with me. I’m wondering if I’ll ever be done. I’m currently being pestered by Semele (the subject of Jupiter’s lovely aria ‘Where’er you walk’ in Handel’s opera, remember?) which has become tangled in my mind with the remarkable story of a wedding which came to grief over a pork pie. In fact, I’m stuck. But I’m hoping that Alex, the glasshouses main man, will help me by pointing out Semele androgyna, reputedly flourishing in the glasshouse corridor somewhere, and that this might unlock something. |
At HomeAs Writer in Residence, thoughts from the garden Archives
October 2020
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