Snippets of news relating to gardens, the environment and the local area, CABAHS members’ posts about garden topics, gardening hints and tips, and short pieces about garden design and history
I have just come across The Meaning of Liff, a satirical dictionary by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, published in 1983. In it is listed:
Trispen, n., A form of intelligent grass. It grows a single tough stalk and makes its home on lawns. When it sees the lawnmower coming, it lies down and pops up again after it has gone by.
The Meaning of Liff, by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd
I wonder what this might look like?
Yes, it’s that time of year again, when everyone asks you what your New Year resolutions are. The magazines and papers are full of good ideas, here are some I’m going to copy:
Don’t fence me in:
There are 22 million gardens in the UK, so they are very important for our wildlife – as long as they can get in and out! Fences are a barrier to many mammals, reptiles and even some insects, but if all those gardens had little gaps between the fences (or better still fences replaced with hedges) wildlife could move freely between them all and biodiversity would increase.
Kick the peat habit for good:
Continue reading The New Gardening YearOn Thursday I joined a tour of Avery Hill Park with the Mottingham Horticultural Society, who had extended an invitation to CABAHS members. It was a beautiful, crisp, sunny afternoon and the park looked gorgeous. Our guide John, from the Friends of Avery Hill Park, told us about the history and prehistory of the park before leading us around the extensive area.
Some members may be familiar with the Winter Garden, a glasshouse currently undergoing renovation work (therefore closed) and about to pass from the hands of the University of Greenwich back to the local council. I look forward to seeing it after renovation is complete!
There are two main areas of the park, historically and now. The more manicured, grassed parkland associated with Avery Hill Mansion (which is currently being converted into a school), and former farmland, with field boundaries and drainage ditches. The Friends are working to make the latter areas more wildlife-friendly by negotiating a meadow-style mowing regime (ie: cutting only twice a year, removing the mowings once seed has dropped, and sowing wildflower seeds) with some mown paths. Even after just a year, it’s possible to see that the range of plant species is extensive. The increase in butterfly numbers and activity in summer 2021 was notable. It is hoped that a general increase in biodiversity will also encourage an increase in bat numbers, which have declined in recent years.
The former field boundaries are still visible, and what would have been hedgerow has grown into rows of trees and scrub, which is excellent for wildlife. A new mixed hedgerow has been planted where one had disappeared, and the drainage ditches have been cleared by volunteers. Another historical feature which lives on through the Friends is the old field names, such as Henley’s Meadow, Little Stony Acre, Grey’s Field and Great Stony Acre. The latter is being planted with native tree species – oak, hornbeam, birch, hawthorn and field maple. Around 1500 trees have been planted over a five year period, and there are plans for a natural drainage pond in the centre as the area is at the bottom of a slope, is mostly heavy clay and becomes very boggy in winter.
It was a very enjoyable afternoon and I appreciated the chance to visit the Park with a knowledgeable guide.
Ali
On a recent visit to Madrid, I called in to the house of Joaquim Sorolla (to my mind, one of the greatest of the Impressionist painters). Like Monet and others, he was one of those artists who loved his garden and, in later life, used it for inspiration and as subject matter. Located in the heart of Madrid, the garden has been created to manage the heat of the city. ‘The garden with its Moorish echoes is the quintessence of the Spanish garden’[1]. It is divided up into three linked but clearly distinguished parts. There is extensive use of aspidistras in huge pots to line balconies and provide focal points around the garden. Roses are grown in pots and situated throughout the garden – the ones I saw in flower were of a cream I associate with ‘Buff Beauty’. And, of course, plenty of pelargoniums in pots, most of which had finished flowering (my visit was in September). If in Madrid, do visit!
Supporting plants in a timely manner has been one of members’ New Year’s resolutions on more than one occasion. I remember one reading: to support plants before they fall over!
But how to do it in a way that is both attractive and unobtrusive? In addition to which, you have to find the right materials. I have long been an admirer of the ‘birch halos’ used by Sarah Raven and at Great Dixter, for example, but had never attempted to create one.
This year I managed to find myself a pile of birch twigs and, inspired by the clear instructions in Arthur Parkinson’s book The Flower Yard, I had a go.
As you can see from the Antirrhinums, although not quite on the same level of skill, my efforts are doing the job and don’t look too bad!
I wonder what other attractive supports members have found for themselves?
Vija
CABAHS member Anne R has sent a link to this rather lovely short film. The Excalibur Estate in Catford is being redeveloped, and the gardens will disappear. The film is produced for the Garden Museum, and features Matthew Wilson.
The Woolwich Garrison Church Trust has commissioned Chelsea Gold Medal winner Juliet Sargeant to create a Commonwealth and Gurkha garden on their site. They already had outline drawings, above, by local designer Don Albrecht, and are now looking for feedback about the plans.
The idea is to have an English Orchard and wildflower garden on one side of the church, and the Commonwealth countries and Gurkhas reflected in the planning on the other side. Chair of the Trust, Tim Barnes, says that in Gurkha villages there is always a central tree which acts as a focal point for village life – so there are plans for a circular seat around the base of one of the trees to reflect this tradition.
There are some lovely ideas, download the full document below if you are interested.
The City of London might not be the first place that you would look to understand how nature conservancy developed in this country. The Wildlife Trusts, the umbrella organisation for local groups that care for their environment, makes it clear that they owe their existence to the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, for which Charles Rothschild, a partner in the merchant bank of N M Rothschild & Sons, was the catalyst.
I thought about him during Joe Beale’s excellent talk on Zoom to the CABAHS meeting on 17 May. Members learned a lot about biodiversity in the area of Greenwich Park, Blackheath and Charlton. We also learned how important it is for people to work together. Joe didn’t just mean small groups of concerned individuals, although those are crucial. He meant engaging with local councils and other bodies to make sure everyone’s interests and concerns are understood.
This is what Charles Rothschild did. He sent out questionnaires to local natural history societies, asking for nominations for sites that could be nature reserves: sites that were ‘worthy of preservation’. On the basis of these returns, the newly-created Society for the Protection of Nature Reserves published a list – Rothschild’s List – and sought government intervention to protect the sites. Here is the list, published in 1915.
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/about-us/rothschilds-list
Joe also brought home the importance of keeping records over time so that measurements of improvement and, sadly, deterioration have value. In the link above The Wildlife Trusts also presents an analysis of the condition of Rothschild’s Reserves, 100 years on.
This document features a pie chart of habitats, 2% of which are pavements. I wonder if our very own Terry might well be responsible for some of that, based on what he told us he was up to at the end of his road!
Charles Rothschild was an extraordinary man by any measure of means. His collection of fleas, now the national collection of fleas in the Natural History Museum, was lovingly catalogued by his daughter, Miriam, who was herself a powerful advocate for nature, advising the Prince of Wales on the creation of his garden at Highgrove.
One of his fans is sports- and nature-writer Simon Barnes, whose book, Prophet and Loss: Time and the Rothschild List is available on Kindle for only £2.37. If members were to buy the book (profits to The Wildlife Trusts) they could buy a cake from the WI at the CABAHS community day at Charlton House on 30 May and still have change from a fiver!
Melanie
In his book The Flower Yard, Arthur Parkinson writes lovingly about his grandmother Min and her gardening practices, typical, he writes, of an older generation of gardeners. He describes the kinds of plots tended by Min and her neighbours and how ‘there was no acceptance of insect life, as proved by the cupboard of death in the garage, its shelves packed with poison, weed killers and bug spray’[1].
My Mother’s death bequeathed to me not only her gardening tools, but a similar shelf’s worth of gardening aids. I have very vivid memories of the shed she and my Father had in their garden, the tools neatly lined up and clean, sweet jars ready for pickled vegetables, saved seed in envelopes and plant labels ready to be re-used. But alongside all this were also the toxins.
And it is not only a younger generation of gardeners who believe in far more environmentally friendly gardening practices. In a recent online talk given by Fergus Garrett, he argued that ‘gardening and ecology have to come closer together’ and devoted one whole lecture to how gardening at Great Dixter has become much more sustainable in recent years and delighting in the huge quantity of species that the gardens are home to.
Driving somewhere in the 1970s meant cleaning the windscreen and headlights of bugs on arrival home. That no longer happens and is a sure indication of how much insect life has been destroyed in a very short space of time.
Vija
[1] Parkinson, A. The Flower Yard (2021) Kyle Books p.119.
