I have recently finished reading Sarah Bilston’s book  ‘The Promise of the Suburbs’. This is a very readable study of the history and development of the suburbs and their representation in literature. Rather than being the incredibly boring places often demonised in popular culture and variously vilified as boring, conventional and unimaginative (Bilston’s introductory chapter is titled ‘The “Horror” of Suburbia’) Bilston shows how they provided opportunities for female professionalism and new ideas about modernity.

The massive expansion of the suburbs during the Victorian period enabled an increasing role for the middle class people who were to occupy them. Central to this were ideas of taste. Visions of landscape gardens and spacious country home interiors were not appropriate to these smaller scale domestic environments and a new market developed for advice texts. With the removal of the paper tax, the end of the 18^th century and the beginning of the 19^th century saw a burgeoning of journals of all kinds and many of these were written and contributed to by women. This was the period of Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot and Jane Austen when middle class women were finding a voice and journals provided an opportunity to share ideas, in many cases anonymously if these were particularly controversial. [1] Bilston includes a chapter on Jane Loudon (b. 1807, d.1858), a name which, until fairly recently, I was unfamiliar with. More popular than Mrs. Beeton in her day and writing at the same time, selling huge numbers of books in print, as a female gardener writing for people in the suburbs, she didn’t stand a chance and, for the most part, has disappeared from view, receiving scant attention in the scholarly discussions of horticulture.

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Jane Wells Webb Loudon was born on 19 August 1807 and died on 13 July 1858. After the death of her mother in 1819, she travelled in Europe for a year with her father, clearly a far-sighted man with regard to a suitable education for girls, but who lost his business to excessive speculation. He died penniless in 1824, when Jane Webb was only 17, forcing her into a position where she had to financially support herself. Already quite a prolific writer, she wrote ‘The Mummy; Or a Tale of the Twenty-second Century’ which was published anonymously in 1827 and has been seen as an early forerunner of science fiction. (Mary Shelley had written Frankenstein in 1818, but The Mummy is a very different narrative).

Through this she came to the attention of John Claudius Loudon, who, on meeting, was surprised to find that she was a woman.

 Although much older than she (he was 47) and well established with a reputation in horticulture, the two were married seven months later. Jane Loudon makes it clear in her diaries that, knowing nothing whatsoever about plants, she was determined to make up her knowledge deficit. She studied botany (at the time this was considered a suitable subject for girls and women ) under John Lindley and worked closely alongside her husband. By the 1840s she was publishing horticultural journals and books in her own right, supporting her husband’s work and his family (his sisters lived next door) and continued to do so for the rest of her life – John Claudius died in 1843, leaving her to bring up and to financially support their 10 year old daughter single-handedly. She died age 50 in the family home in Bayswater.

[1] See work such as ‘The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer’ by Mary Poovey and Alexis Easely’s ‘First Person Anonymous’.

Sian’s latest Newsletter to the members of the Blackheath Flower Club:

Here we are in Lockdown once more, on remembrance day 11/11/2020. Elizabeth Crawley’s great granddaughter, Daisy, wrote this moving poem when she was 10, she is 17 now:

Earl Haig founded the Royal British Legion in 1921 adopting the poppy as its emblem. He ordered 9 million poppies from a French woman, Anna Guerin, and sold them on 11th November, 1921. That first ‘Poppy Appeal’ raised over £106, 000 to help veterans with housing and jobs. To ensure plenty of poppies for the next appeal a Poppy Factory was set up to employ disabled ex-servicemen.

Everyone has been busy decorating churches and windows with poppies etc: Richard put a collage of petals in his window, Yvonne decorated Saint Alfege’s, I put a display in Ascension Church.

Meanwhile, in Westminster Abbey, NAFAS (National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies) Ladies (lead by Kathy Stangaard, who has demonstrated regularly at Blackheath and Mottingham Clubs) put foliage round the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. They also made a posy for Camilla to put on the Tomb. Also they were asked to place a rose🌹on 82 chairs for the only guests allowed. They heard Jools Holland and Ruby Turner practising ‘Abide with me’. The picture of decorating the Tomb was on BBC news, but no mention of NAFAS…

The British tomb of the Unknown Warrior holds an unidentified British soldier killed on a European battlefield during the First World War. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on 11th November 1920, simultaneously with a similar interment of a French unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

…We will remember them.

With apologies to Rod Liddle, writing in The Spectator!

I am sad that my Quince tree (the produce of which gave me the CABAHS “Best in Show” cup once upon a time!) has not managed to bring a single fruit to maturity this year. Squirrels and the dreaded brown rot have taken all.

Quinces were first grown in England by Edward I, the ‘Hammer of the Scots’, a man who would have made short work of Nicola Sturgeon. The fruit resembles a degenerate pear — a pear which has made bad choices in its life. Downy and squat. The tree from which it emerges is a delight, especially in early May when fecund with blossom, which is the time that famous perfume begins to emanate. That perfume stays with you — in the fruit bowl, when you are peeling it and, most of all, while it is being cooked.

Like all good food, the quince requires work, time and an appetite for deferred gratification. It is a beast to prepare. Peel and core a quince and you will find a swede can be sliced through like butter in comparison. The flesh of the quince is fibrously obstinate and the core intractable; be careful with that knife. When you have finished peeling and quartering, set the seeds aside in case someone you really don’t like comes over. They are rich in cyanide. Toast them and say to your adversary they are pumpkin seeds..

Anyway, cook those quarters gently. Either poach in a couple of inches of sugared water, a dash of honey and perhaps a strand of thyme in a saucepan on the stove top, or in a bath of the same in the oven. The recipe instructions vary as to how long you should do this — some suggest 40 minutes. Rubbish. You need at least two hours on a low heat. Only then will the quince reveal its magic — the gradual metamorphosis from a wan, pale yellow to a rich crimson, the anthocyanins doing their work. Add another hour or so if you’re making quince cheese from the pulp and then another six to rest, before straining and cooking again with added sugar. It will set just fine due to its natural load of pectin.

I prefer the quartered fruit to still have a little bite; five or six segments and the reserved cooking juice will transform your apple crumble with a gentle tartness. You can purée the red fruit into an accompaniment for duck, or simply serve as they are, with their gloriously red and sticky cooking juice, topped with cream. Either way, hurry: the quince season is nearly at an end.

It has become a bit of a truism to say that gardens and open green spaces have become a lifeline to many during 2020. A survey examining life under lockdown as measured by Natural England’s People and Nature Survey, conducted in May 2020 found the following:

Our own project to renovate the Old Pond Garden at Charlton House has shown that many volunteers have appreciated the opportunity to get out into the open air and to be with other people. It has become the perfect community project.

Sue Stuart-Smith’s (many gardeners may be more familiar with her husband Tom Stuart-Smith, the garden designer and Chelsea gold winner) ‘The Well Gardened Mind’ was published earlier this year. Sue Stuart-Smith is a prominent psychiatrist and psychotherapist and her book examines neuroscience and psychoanalysis in the context of gardening and makes a strong claim for the benefits of gardening for mental well-being. Monty Don has long argued for the role of the garden in relieving depression and several episodes of Gardener’s World have featured individuals whose lives have been supported by the activity of gardening.

Gardens do not stand still; they are dynamic and ever-changing environments. Gardeners are always planning and looking forward. At the moment many of us, if we haven’t already done so, are ordering our bulbs for next spring. I am thinking about colour combinations (again) and I have a plan to move around my dahlias and make room for new varieties. On another recent visit to Great Dixter there was a stunning variety which, on enquiry, turned out to be Dovegrove. If I can find a supplier, I would like to include this in my borders next year.

And this is how Elizabeth von Arnim felt about looking forward to the spring!

And so we look forward to the next year.

On Wednesday evening I sat in on a Garden Masterclass presentation from Rosy Hardy on geraniums. Many people will know of Hardy’s Cottage Garden plants already; they have had a stand at the Chelsea Flower Show for many years and have won in excess of 20 RHS gold medals. Rosy’s energy and enthusiasm for plants seems undimmed by all the years! However, she did point out that 2020 was going to be their final year at Chelsea because the months of April and May are a busy time for the nursery and it all becomes too much work at a critical time. That final year will now be 2021.

The range of geraniums presented was astonishing and I found my knowledge being extended further and further. From varieties that I had not heard of such as G. wlassovianum to the very biddable G. malviflorum, which flowers in spring only to die back and  then produce attractive leaf clumps through the winter. It sounds like the ideal plant for the herbaceous border. There is a geranium for every garden situation, Rosy claimed, and even those which are flagged to grow in a free draining sunny position for example, if they find themselves somewhere moist and rather shady they often thrive.

Participants had joined from around the world: from London to Scotland, the east coast of America to Japan. Questions at the end demonstrated the range of interest and the conditions to which geraniums will adapt. I for one, will certainly be  checking out some of the varieties to include more in my garden.

I have been reading that the Autumn colours this year should be lovely, following an unusually warm September and the coming month will provide an opportunity to get out into the gardens to experience these first hand.

One of the most spectacular displays may be at Stourhead in Wiltshire, where exotic species such as tulip and katsura trees stand alongside natives such as oak, beech and birch. Tom Hill, who looks after sites at Winkworth Arboretum in Surrey and Petworth Park in West Sussex, says he can already see the colours beginning to change. And it isn’t just the colour of the trees. At Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland, the assistant head gardener, Oliver Johnson, says he loves the light at this time of year.

Living as we do, on the edge of Kent, within fairly easy reach of a number of lovely gardens, it might be worth taking advantage of our privileged location. With the evenings already drawing in and with the potential of further localised lockdowns due to coronavirus, taking the time to notice nature and to take in the colourful landscapes that we can see at this time of year seems more important than ever.

Simon Toomer, a plant specialist at the National Trust, says that “The particular dusky, heavy scent of autumn and the sounds of crisp leaves crunching under foot, will all serve to help our wellbeing through the next few colder, darker months.”

Before I turn to the second week in October, I should explain that the first week in October saw me, by and large, cowering indoors, hoping to avoid the rain.  I felt shamed into turning my attention to several ‘projects’ that I had earmarked for myself when lockdown began, err, just over six months ago. 

One of these projects was to put some order into several piles of books that I have been accumulating and I saved that one till last, as a sort of reward to myself.  It’s possible to do a fair amount of sitting down and indulge in a little light reading to help the project along.  When I was almost done I unearthed (no pun intended) a great little collection of old and new books about gardening that a friend had presented to me when I took on my allotment. 

One was a charming reprint of a book containing sensible advice for the novice WWII allotment-holder, including how to dig efficiently without straining your back – why didn’t I pay more attention?! – and a list of necessary tools to see you through:

Adam the Gardener, a Sunday Express publication from around 1954, presents the gardener’s year, what to do and when, with illustrations of Adam in action.  He never looks very happy and I fear he hadn’t got the advice about digging techniques.  I thought I would see what Adam had to say about jobs to be done in the garden in the second week in October.  Here’s what I found! 

A suggestion made by Anna has prompted me to think what we can learn from random gardening mistakes, or shall we say, unplanned activity.

I use a lot of salad vegetables and always have a variety of leaves growing to use as a base for additional ingredients. I sow a selection in various seed trays, which I then prick out and later plant into the garden.  A few years ago, at the tail end of the summer, I sowed seeds into their seed trays as usual. For whatever reason, I failed to prick out and then felt it was too late to do anything much with them, so I was left with several seed trays full of fresh young seedlings. And I left them. But what happened then was that they provided me with a steady supply of cut-and-come-again salad leaves (the kind you pay a fortune for in bags in supermarkets) to enjoy through the winter.  Ever since then, I use this method to provide me with small young and tasty salad leaves, throughout both the summer and winter. I do this with Mizuna, Endive, Rapa da Foglia (turnip greens), mustard, rocket as well as the usual lettuce varieties which we grow. I am sure it works equally well with chard and beetroot and members will have their own varieties to suggest here. Obviously the mild winters we have been experiencing do help, I am not sure what a sharp frost would do. Ultimately, the plants will become very rootbound, but growth in the winter slows down, so this takes a while to happen.

Trays of seedlings sown 5 September.

The usefulness of this method is also that you could do this on your kitchen windowsill, balcony, or whatever space is available.

I sowed these Zinnia seeds directly into the ground in June and replanted the thinnings and ended up with two rows.  This is the first time I have ever grown Zinnias. It was old seed and I probably bought the packet at our plant sale a year or two ago for the going rate of 20p!  

I reckon my success is down to beginner’s luck and the Poundland compost!!!! I have very light soil so I also added the ash from the bonfires and chicken manure pellets before I planted up the plot.  As they are adjacent to my tomato plants I made sure they were watered nearly every day to encourage a good root system.  Yet information online says they only need watering every five to seven days.  I was warned not to get water on their leaves as they are prone to folliar diseases. They are growing adjacent to the boundary fence and I’ve had to support them when the high winds came. 

There are doubles and singles, in various shades of pink and yellow. The bees love them and they are long lasting as cut flowers.  They are the first plants I look at when I arrive at my allotment plot and I coo over them! Margaret grows rich, strong orange Zinnias which knock my Zinnias aside and they are simply stunning.  Definitely a plant to try again next year.

Hole Park is in Kent somewhere between Benenden and Rolveden but I warn you it is not well signposted and we drove past two entrances without seeing them, so beware! It’s not a garden for specialist plants but if you want to see a beautiful garden set in parklands with lovely views then do visit. It has 16 acres of formal gardens with woodland walks and with a manor house dating from 1720 surrounded by 150 acres of parkland.

There are yew hedges, a walled garden (although short on plants here) the Egg Pond and a Vineyard. Then there is the so called Millenium garden, which could rival Great Dixter’s sunken garden, if there were more plants in the surrounding beds and so on. The Woodland walk is famed for its bluebells in late spring.

The house is not open to the public as it is currently occupied but the owners are on hand to give advice and information. There’s a stableyard with a small cafe doing light lunches and tea and coffee and they sell their own jam and Hole Park honey. And best of all, there weren’t hordes of visitors either and the staff were friendly.

If you want a nice peaceful relaxing visit in lovely surroundings, I recommend a visit to Hole Park!

Hole Park is about 1 hr 15 mins from Greenwich and is open Weds & Thurs plus some Sundays in October. Sat Nav TN17 4JA. It is open for the NGS on 11 October. Tickets £8 (the Gardeners World 2 for1 tickets work). Also keep an eye on their Events page, they host plant fairs occasionally.

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