Author: philosophergardener

Betula ermanii

The garden holds its breath against the cold and everything is still. Spring is coiled, waiting patiently like a dog on its bed with its nose tucked into its tail, waiting for the word. Snow lingers in pockets and frost greets each morning. I am less patient. I have been looking for Pulmonaria in flower for the last fortnight – it is one of those plants which signals the turn of the year, but it is still a week or ten days away.

I take my breakfast coffee out into my friends’ garden and walk the perimeter with the dogs. The morning sun picks out the bright white bark of Betula ermanii, Erman’s birch. I planted a pair twelve years ago next to the drive, in soil which is little better than sand. They were 1.8m/6′ when they were planted and are close to three times that height now. Birch are short-lived by the standard of trees, and quick to mature. Erman’s birch can reach its full height of 12m/70′ within twenty years in a temperate climate. It is native to NE Asia – deep, cold Asia – and will survive anything the British climate can throw at it. In the last couple of years, the bark of this pair has started to peel, curling away in strips which are bright copper on the reverse. They have all the space they need and have suffered no accidents, so their crowns are even and attractive. If ever I have a spare piece of ground, something in the order of a third or half an acre, I would like to plant it with a mixture of Betula ermanii and Amelanchier canadensis, evenly spaced. The shorter, round-headed Amelanchier would look splendid among the taller, more upright birch. It would be a joy in spring when the Amelanchier is covered in delicate white flowers, and I would plant the sward below with lilac Crocus tommasinianus. It would be  a joy in autumn too when the birch is dressed in buttery gold, and its companion in shades of yellow to red. I will call my glade something portentous like the Garden of Cadmus, because here, in my half acre, these natives of Russia and North America will live in beautiful harmony.

As I stand, looking at the birch, feeling the morning sun warm on my back, I am filled with hope. I am 44, but the speed at which these trees grow means there is still time for me to plant such a garden and to see it mature. The catkins are well-developed and will open any day now, and in the field above the house I can hear a skylark raising its song high into the air.

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Snow

I have walked across the city, searching her gardens for what I seek, but I am too late. Snow flowers everywhere in forgetful white and sound seems to belong to another place. Except for the sharp wind which cuts my ears, I hear nothing. I find my way to the cloister where I am sheltered from the storm, although I see its violence in the swirling snow. I walk its circuit, watching the blizzard through the arches of the stone tracery, but hearing nothing, not even the wind, as if the world is very far away. This was why the cloister was built after all – to allow the scholars to exercise in bad weather. There was no question that exercise was necessary, and healthy for mental exertion too.

A cloister is one of those rare human artefacts which performs the same function in opposing conditions, like an umbrella-parasol. In this wet northern island, a cloister provides shelter from the rain and snow, whilst further south it is the fierce sun it shades. It is a Gibsonian affordance: its structure enables exercise in intemperate conditions and invites me to walk. I walk. And think. It’s protection is all around me, I am cloistered within walls and gates which are themselves within walls and gates. It is an enclosed and guarded space, but it is not a prison. The arcade of the cloister draws my feet and my thoughts onwards. There are no windows to the outer world and the arches open inwards onto a garden. It is a sacred space in the purest sense: a space set aside and special. Only a blackbird disturbs the stillness as it picks the leaf litter under the holm oak in search of food. The holm oak, Quercus ilex, is magnificent. Holm is an archaic word for holly, which is recorded in the botanical ilex. The leaves are not prickled, but the tree is evergreen. It was planted in the nineteenth-century so is a mere juvenile of its kind, but it has a presence which makes it worthy of veneration. It is known to millions worldwide having starred in a popular film. Fame has not turned its head.

I feel the cloister’s history as I walk. It is not a sense of going back in time, but that all of its time is here present to me. The ground level is the same as it was when it was built in AD1389 and the patina of time has been gentle on the stone. Even the carved graffiti connects me with the unknown lives who have walked there before me, and who, like me may walk there again, although I leave no trace. The memorial stones embedded in the paving and walls mark the lives of those whose walks have ceased.

New College cloister

Rosmarinus officinalis

We arrived after dark, as I remember it. The villa was an hour’s drive from Florence, high in the Tuscan hills. It had taken us two hours to get there, having spent an hour trying and failing to leave the city in the right direction. We were hungry and tired, stressed and irritable. We walked through the property and out onto the terrace where we were assailed by the scent of rosemary. The air was thick with it – the day must have been hot – and the essential oils were rich and resinous. The source was a low hedge which bordered the outer edge of the paving; a dense, thick-growing hedge of Rosmarinus officinalis. The dear owners had left a bottle of wine, a loaf of homemade bread, and some local sheep’s cheese for us. We carried it outside and dined like kings.

It is hard not to be envious of the Italians. the fecundity of the soil and the generosity of the climate gifts them such immense vegetable riches. The rosemary of our terrace was so strongly scented that we almost mistook it in the dark for that other Mediterranean star, myrtle. All week, we ate rabbit and wild boar dishes flavoured with rosemary and thyme, and the complexity of flavour which these herbs added was unlike anything we could achieve in England with the same ingredients. Our rosemary just never has the sustained heat to thrive in that way, nor have I ever been able to grow such a dense hedge with it. I consider it a ‘dry and spicy’ herb akin to bay, and it pairs well with meat or roasted vegetables such as potato and butternut squash.

The ‘officinalis’ of the name indicates that this is a herb which was valued for its medicinal uses, whilst Rosmarinus translates as ‘dew of the sea’. I, clearly, have been to the wrong parts of the Mediterranean as I have never seen it growing wild on the coastline as I would expect. The hard, needle-like leaf would make it salt-tolerant though. It also prefers light, well-drained soils and is tremendously drought resistant. I always find a place for it in the garden, preferably somewhere I will pass frequently and will brush against it, or can tease it between my fingers. Cooked or raw, eaten or inhaled, I find rosemary comforting and nourishing to the spirit. Like all evergreens, it carries the garden through winter, and its habit of flowering at almost any time of year brings little points of colour to a dark day. There are upright forms which are striking in pots and good for a small space such as a balcony, and prostrate cultivars which tumble nicely over a wall, although I have never found these as hardy.  Mine is flowering now, with blossoms like little flakes of Italian sky, promising summer.

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Cyclamen coum

There is an old saying, ‘plant pears for heirs’ and it is certainly true that gardening is, more often than not, an exercise in delayed gratification. The duration of the delay differs depending on what is being planted, but instant results are few and far between. I have needed to remind myself of this every autumn when I have been planting Cyclamen coum. The tubers arrive from the wholesaler, looking dead and starting to wizen like forgotten potatoes. The day before I am intending to plant them, I pop them in a bucket and fill it with water and by the next morning they have plumped into flattened doughnuts of still dead-looking, slightly scaly brown lumps. They are very unpromising.

I plant them 5cm/2″ deep under trees and in the front of shrub beds as they prefer semi-shade. Planting them at that depth ensures that they don’t dry out or get disturbed, but they seem to move themselves to the surface, and certainly those which grow by themselves from seed are always thus. It is not always easy to plant Cyclamen. The tubers produce roots from the bottom and flowers and leaves from the top, but in their dormant state, it can be tricky to tell which way is up. It becomes an exercise in self-forgiveness as I know I will make mistakes. I plant them and forget about them, and the cycle of the year moves on.

Cyclamen coum is native to the Caucasus with a separate population through the Lebanon and down into Israel. It tolerates all soils and is hardy down to -15 Celsius, although its preference for growing under trees and shrubs means it gains further protection from the cold. Its common name eastern sowbread suggests it has had a traditional role in pig-husbandry, when woodland grazing was the norm rather than the exception. In the English garden, mice, voles, and grey squirrels are the most frequent consumers.

In late winter, on a sunny day, when I am out in the garden mooching, there they are suddenly, my forgotten landmines of colour, exploding in bright sparks of magenta and pink, bringing light to shady corners. Lines of R.S Thomas’s poem The Garden come to mind – these are, The silent detonations/ Of power wielded without sin. And I remember past loves, and smile in my solitude.

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Jantar Mantar

In the heat of the afternoon, I walked in the garden of light. My mind was full of noise, but gardens have always soothed me. Just inside the entrance, two huge astrolabes hang from a beam like temple gongs and bid me pay attention. The Jantar Mantar, calculations with instruments is an observatory garden, and the instruments are extraordinary. The Vrihat Samrat Yantra, the ‘supreme instrument’ has a gnomon 90′ high; its quadrants have radii of 49’10”. It can measure time to an accuracy of two seconds. It is an instrument and designed to be read, so each quadrant has a flight of stairs on either side, curving up and round with it, so that measurements can be taken. It is an once massive and insubstantial – all its energy is carried upward. It is just one of many, each one devoted to discerning the subtleties of time. Their proportions are mathematical and harmonious, and beautiful, however strange. As I walked among them, I imagined them as instruments in the other sense, as things which resonate, creating sound if only I had the ears to hear it.

On a terrace, like a flock of twelve stone birds about to take flight, the Rasivalaya of the zodiac: instruments to measure celestial longitude and latitude. Each of the twelve has a unique gnomon which aligns to the elliptic pole at the point where its constellation transits the meridian. The shape, size, and angle in relation to the vertical axis of the gnomon is likewise unique to each, and these subtle differences along with the curve of their quadrants give the group their sense of movement, of flight.

I left the garden feeling temporary, and tranquil.

My hotel is built to a form which recurs in time and place. There is a first courtyard which opens to the street, and a second, private space formed by a peristyle around a garden: a form familiar to Pliny the Elder in Pompeii, and it was ancient by then. I finish my meal and take my ginger tea out into the centre of the lawn, feeling the cool grass between my toes. The tall building frames the sky, much as an oculus does, creating a window of darkness within the light pollution of the city. I have seen the effect before, far away in the cloisters of New College, Oxford. In the window of the night, the stars shine. As I cradle my tea, thinking of the Jantar Mantar, I am reminded that the speed of light is finite, that some of the stars I am seeing will no longer exist, but the living and the dead look the same to me. That we are creatures who do not see the world as it is, but as it was. And yet, we spend our time devising elaborate systems, trying to see the world as it will be. These have been mythical, philosophical, religious, mathematical – at times chimaera of some or all of these. As I walked among the Rasivalaya, I came at last to Sagittarius, my own chimaerical sign, with the steepest and tallest gnomon of the twelve. It is pictured below. Our fate is to live in a present we struggle to see, caught between the visions of a future which does not exist and a past which exists only as echoes and memories. And, like the centaur, to have the body of an animal and a mind which dreams of eternity.

Sagittarius

Eranthis hyemalis

Winter aconites remind me of precocious blond choirboys. Their round golden heads pop up early in the year, carried above a ruff of neat, green, leafy bracts. There is something rather unruly about how they multiply and spread too – like a playground full of children who have been running around and have been told to freeze.

Eranthis is native to deciduous, calcareous woodland of France, Italy, and the Balkans. Its early flowering time coincides with the maximum penetration of sunlight to the woodland floor, before the trees come into leaf. Later in the year, once the canopy is in place, Eranthis retreats underground and sleeps away the summer and autumn. Its indigenous habitat, as for all plants, is a good guide to the conditions it enjoys when growing in the gardens of foreign lands. It prefers partial to full shade, and moist, well-drained soil. It can tolerate all soil types and pH ranges, but it thrives on chalk. It is one of a select group of plants which will grow under the handsome and useful, but allelopathic walnuts, which release toxins from their roots to inhibit the growth of competitors. Unlike blond choirboys, Eranthis is perfectly hardy, and continues to perform down to -20 Celsius.

Eranthis hyemalis has a confused identity. It is not an aconite, although the foliage does bear a passing resemblance to members of that deadly family, such as monkshood. All parts of it are mildly toxic though, as befits a member of RANUNCULACEAE. The botanical name is a compound of Greek and Latin elements. Eranthis being from the Greek, meaning ‘spring flower’, and hyemalis from the Latin, meaning ‘belonging to winter.’ I expect the botanists who named it were having an argument.

I find Eranthis works best en masse, which is fortunate as it naturalises rapidly if it likes where it is situated. I have planted swathes of it beneath beech trees, whose shade seems to suit them particularly well. Likewise, they thrive in a deciduous shrub border and help to draw the eye into it, in so doing, transforming the border from a crowd into a collection of attractive individuals with different personalities of bark and structure. The golden flowers harmonise handsomely with any red tones, such as the bark of Betula albosinensis, the Chinese red birch, or contrast dramatically with the whites and silvers of Rubus thibetanus, the ghost bramble, or of Betula pendula, the silver birch. I have seen them planted at the front of a mixed border where they carpet the bare soil between the crowns of summer-flowering herbaceous plants. Wherever they are though, something showy or masking needs to follow after them. Their flowering days are soon over and they become untidy, lanky specimens that hang around for far too long after their sweet charm has faded.

Eranthis hyemalis

Sarcococca hookeriana

Sweet box is a viola in the garden: it may not be the most glamorous of the instruments in the orchestra, but its depth and tone would be sorely missed if it was absent. It fills that difficult middle-section of the border, where something reliable is needed to provide texture and contrast to the showier plants around it. And, undoubtedly, it has its own virtues too. First among these are the fragrant flowers which give it the sweet of its common name. Sarcococca flowers all winter and sets small glossy berries which range in colour from red to black. These are clearly not valued by British birds as food as they often endure into the following winter, so that flowers and berries are carried together. Although its leaf is shinier and more pointed than a true box, it is a member of the same family. Visually, it can be easily overlooked. I went to the University Parks in Oxford with the express intention of photographing a specimen and I walked straight by it – my eye was caught by a fine Poncirus trifoliata on the other side of the path. The powerful, sweet scent stopped me in my tracks though, and I returned to my prize. I like to think that if anything happened to my eyesight then I will be able to enjoy with my nose alone, a garden at all times of year so long as the plants have been chosen thoughtfully. I once worked in a garden which was a visually sophisticated composition, but it contained almost no scented plants. It was like watching a film with the soundtrack turned off. As scent is the handmaiden of memory, I have only to catch a note of Sarcococca in the air and my mind fills with pictures and associations of times and places.

Sarcococca is a victim of its other virtues, virtues which make it loved by amenity landscapers and parks and gardens departments. It is often found near public toilets. It tolerates all kinds of soil, although it prefers moist and well-drained loam. It grows in all growable pH ranges of acidity and alkalinity. It is hardy down to -15 Celsius, which makes it winter-proof throughout the British Isles. It prefers shadier conditions and will survive even in dry shade, which means it will grow where fussier plants will not. Indeed, I inherited one which had been planted in full sun by a firm of garden designers, and I had to transplant it: its leaves had turned an unpleasant shade of yellow. I am pleased to report that it recovered quickly once it was tucked against a north-facing wall. It suckers, which means that it spreads and within ten years can form a clump in the range of 1.5m/5′ to 2.5m/8′ across. As it suckers, it should be possible to lift and divide it if it grows beyond its bounds, but I have never done this. I have planted it as an under-storey beneath small, delicate trees such as Amelanchier canadensis, and it has always had as much space as it can fill. The dense, evergreen foliage provides a perfect foil to the gentle cloud of tree blossom above.

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Helleborus niger

The Christmas rose Helleborus niger is a plant of the old dispensation: it favours the Julian calendar and is usually flowering more splendidly in the first week of January than in December. Although it is semi-evergreen, I find it is good to cut the year-old leaves down to ground level once the flowers begin to show. Then the flowering stems can grow and be seen without the rather tatty foliage spoiling the effect. By the time the flowering has finished, the fresh new leaves have come through and they, in turn, look splendid once the seed heads have been removed. Hellebores grow to around 40cm/15″ tall and provide interest and colour all year round. The leathery, palmate leaf is handsome, and the predominantly white flower can reach 8cm/4″ across. It flowers for weeks, through the darkest months of the year.

I found it highly valuable in Herefordshire where I grew it at the front of shady shrub borders. It liked the moist alkaline soil and its annual dressing of composted mulch. Within a couple of years, the plants had doubled in size. After four years, the clumps were ready to be lifted and divided. I prefer to do this in spring rather than autumn, as the plant has longer to recover from the trauma before the physiologically expensive flowering begins. The daughter plants can be used to populate the garden as hellebores are more beautiful in swathes. Or, better still, to give to friends. It seems right to share with others the gift which the world has given freely. Memories of friendship are planted and the roots grow deeper, year on year. It is one of the consolations of ageing.

The simple, open flower resembles a wild rose, but it is in fact a member of the buttercup family, RANUNCULACEAE, and all parts of it are toxic. It was used by the Greeks in 585BC  during the First Sacred War to poison the water supply of the city of Kirrha and thus weaken the defenders. It is a potent plant: hellebore, along with nightshade, hemlock, and aconite comprise the four classic botanical poisons. Despite, or because, of this it has a long history of medical use, often as an abortifacient or purgative of excessive humours. The legendary Mylampus of Pylos used it to cure the daughters of King Proteus of Argos from a madness induced by Dionysius – a story which raises interesting questions about the causes and nature of insanity. More recently, the magnificent polymath Theophrastus noted its sedative effects, whilst Dioscorides made extensive use of it in his first century De Materia medica. I think it is a finer plant in the garden than in the pharmacy.

Helleborus niger

Chimonanthus praecox

Wintersweet is one of winter’s compensations: a reminder that life does not stop in the dark, short days, it merely slows down, and for some species, it starts. In each flower, the next generation is conceived, and with the fertile seed, life begins. I first encountered Chimonanthus on a cold January evening in Oxford. I smelt it before I saw it, and followed my nose some 20m/60′ before finding the source, tucked against the old city wall. Even then I was confused as the scent hardly seemed stronger up close to the shrub than it had at some distance: it was equally diffuse throughout its range. The flowers are visually insignificant, and I concluded that whatever it was, it must be pollinated by moths, some species of which fly in even the coldest of the winter months. In fact, this Chinese native is pollinated by beetles, those industrious creatures which seem to have a nose for so many good things.

In China it has been cultivated for over one thousand years, being highly valued for its scent and its usefulness in traditional medicine. Its cultivation spread to Korea and Japan, and in the modern era to the USA and Britain. It was worth the wait.

Wintersweet is praecox and the flowers are borne on bare twigs, although sometimes the last of the golden autumn leaves are still clinging on when it starts to bloom. The flower has waxy, translucent petals, the outer being pale yellow whilst the inner petals are pale yellow with dark red markings. They are a little more than a centimetre across and hang their heads like a shy child. Only the scent catches the attention. The scent is sweet enough to warrant the name, certainly, and slightly fizzy, like sherbet.

In Oxford it was growing in a shady spot against an east-facing stone wall and it was rather untidy. In our garden here there is a mature shrub, growing freely. It has reached 4m/14′ in all directions and has a round, fairly open-branched habit. In leaf it is not that decorative, and it is better suited to a larger garden than ours where the burden of putting on a show can be shared by many plants. Or perhaps the edge of a woodland garden where I would plant it with other winter-flowering shrubs such as Oemleria and Hamamelis. Hamamelis, witch hazel, has spidery flowers which likewise are borne on bare twigs, whilst Oemleria tends to flower just as the bright green leaves are breaking bud. All three share scent characteristics, being light, diffuse, and clean-smelling. The scents harmonise, creating a pleasingly intriguing cocktail. Visually, all three are modest, which makes their companionship easy. In the garden here our wintersweet is planted next to an equally mature Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’. It too flowers in winter, but the marriage is not a happy one. The Viburnum’s scent is heavier and sweeter, almost cloying, and it overwhelms the delicate wintersweet.

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Buxus sempervirens

In winter, a garden is stripped back to its bones. Its structure is laid bare with all its strengths and weaknesses revealed. Much of the form of the garden which is visible in winter comes from the hard elements – the walls and the paths. But, the evergreens are an essential part of the composition. This may be the one appropriate use of the term ‘architectural plant’: hedges are green walls; topiary can be columns and sculptures. I like the idea that the columns of temples were inspired by tree trunks and trees can be used to mimic columns.

Buxus sempervirens, Box ever-living, is a winter star. Box hedges define parterres and their lines are clearer in winter. I love them even more when they are frosted, or better still, frosted having first been draped in silk by industrious spiders. The hoar frost clings to the strands in jagged crystals and melts to nothing with the first sun. The hedges provide shelter which can leave the ground at their bases free from frost. They cast shadows which prolong the frost within them, creating clear lines of bare dark soil and white crystals. The pattern plays out during the day, a visible testimony to the passage of time.

In summer, Box has that smell. It is the smell of itself, certainly, but a self which belongs to a family of scents which includes Ruta graveolens, Rue, and Ficus carica, Fig. They are at once green, woody, and dry-spicy. They are complex, enticing, intriguing, and possibly toxic. The danger is part of the experience. It is this depth of character which keeps me returning to it, nosing it in and trying to understand it fully. I love it on a hot day; the scent seems to intensify the heat. I run my fingers over it, enjoying the sensory dissonance. The leaves are oval and look soft, but the dryness of the foliage and its stiffness mean that my hand conflicts my eye. Even the sound of it under my fingers is a dry, stiff rustling. It is the sound and scent of a summer holiday in Italy, with golden gravel crunching underfoot. And light everywhere.

Pliny the Elder considered topiary to be akin to abortion. He was a great man, but mistaken in many things. My reading is that he considered it a frustration of the true course of nature, and that that was an expression of the vice hubris. Although the Romans brought their world, animal and human, to die for their entertainment in arenas across the empire, their most reflective thinkers considered that there were appropriate limits to this exploitation and manipulation of nature.

My favourite Buxus sempervirens grows in the garden of The Old Parsonage Hotel in Oxford (www.oldparsonage-hotel.co.uk). It is pictured below. I expect one ‘got away’ by accident, and grew to its natural height of 5m/15′ or so. It has been pruned back to a cloud structure of exposed trunks and balls of foliage. It is context-perfect. The garden is relatively small and rectilinear; it is enclosed by a wall on three sides and the house on the fourth. It is not a space for meandering paths and water in the middle distance. It is a place for order and precision.

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