A Horticultural Perambulation

For too long had I agonised over the distinction between delphiniums and geraniums. Of course I knew from readings long ago by Nanny Amburey of A A Milne's The Doctor and the Dormouse that the former flowers were blue and the latter red but how could you tell them apart?

Having shirked this dilemma for too long, I decided to show moral fibre and look positively on an invitation from (pace Rumpole of the Bailey) she who must be obeyed to accompany her on  a Summer Garden Tour. This three day peregrination came under the auspices of a reputable organisation and punctured a hole in the already staggering bank balance but it did also allow glimpses of  --  and meals in  --  historic places as diverse as Sissinghurst Castle, Charleston Manor and Great Dixter. I screwed my courage to the sticking place and accepted.

The list of dramatis personae for this horticultural sojourn in Kent and Sussex was impressive. Headed it was by the eponymous, ubiquitous (on electronic media anyway) and modestly matriarchal Sarah Raven from whom there emanated no fuss or fanfare but an encyclopaedia of garden knowledge and a refreshing willingness to admit to lack of certainty when very occasionally stumped. One soon saw that she is remarkably successful because she is remarkably accomplished. Prepared to roll her sleeves up in a delightfully uncomplicated and endlessly patient fashion, she would have made an excellent head of a country boarding school but in her chosen context she was omnipotent. The very lilies of the field seemed to obey her:

There once was a pink climbing rose
Which chose not to thrive but repose;
When told by S Raven,
' Be no longer craven ',
It leapt into life and now grows.

On the first evening we had more than a glimpse of Sarah's life partner, Adam Nicolson  --  son of Nigel and therefore rather a good egg. Gregarious, garrulous, charming and relaxed, he was the earthly transmitter of possibly eternal truths: Sissinghurst yesterday, today and tomorrow; it mattered not which. An action man who would not necessarily admit to such, he was so broadly talented and so very nice, yet genuinely self-effacing. He would probably have preferred to be aboard a schooner chasing a kittiwake round Cape Horn.

Adam's sister, Juliet, completed the impressive trio. She was no less gifted and no less delightful; one in whom still waters and sensitivity gently conspired to give us a quietly inspiring communicator. Dressed in flowing white apparel with certain night shirt qualities, one would not have been surprised had she morphed into Lady Macbeth in Act 5 Scene 1 and glided across the lawn at Sissinghurst, tormented that all the perfumes of Arabia would not sweeten her little hand.

Graham Gough is the founder and architect of Marchant's Hardy Plants, an oasis of colour in the rich wilderness of green on the edge of the South Downs. A Mexican style sunhat sat easily on his head as he took time to tell us he was a ' nurseryman '. There was no doubting his belief, in agreement with Arthur Fallowfield ( for those who remember Beyond Our Ken ) that ' the answer lies in the soil '. It seemed that on a very hot day and with energy waning somewhat, we nevertheless marvelled at his achievement of combining an artistic temperament with a scientific approach ( right plant, right place as I learnt to say with feigned intelligence ) to create something rather special.

And so to the Bloomsbury expert  --  what a sin to forget her name  --  in the heart of Charleston Manor. Here we saw dedication and passion undiluted, such admirably single minded preoccupation. So much as rest a finger on a chair where Vanessa Bell or Lytton Strachey once sat and a thunderbolt was unleashed, the equal of which was last witnessed when Zeus was dealing with the Titans. This seemed faintly ironical as the Bloomsbury crowd had scant respect for material items of household furniture; they were merely objects to be painted over.

At Great Dixter there was a charming and engaging guide, one of the gardeners, who knew just how to hold the attention of a meandering class with minds of their own. He lived in Seaford and was therefore wise and  a man of many parts. A former member of the band of the Coldstream Guards, he played two separate instruments on the original  recording of the signature tune of Dad's Army which still pervades the nation's sitting rooms on Saturday evenings. He exuded equilibrium and a feeling of  ' You don't have to be a professional to work here and I'm not sure it makes any difference '.

And so to our fellow horticulturalists. They were too nice really; you can search in vain for a redeeming feature in Iago; with our companions one would have looked without success to find a chink in their armour of sound citizenship and friendliness. They came from all over; they became absorbed and lost in the beauty and the mechanics of it all. Many notebooks were filled; many classical names tripped off their tongues, perhaps sometimes in their questions and observations one could detect the smallest degree of competitiveness.

And what did I learn? Well not the difference between delphiniums and geraniums, I am afraid to say; they barely got a look in. I discovered that Sissinghurst had once been a very grand Tudor castle, which fell into long term decay, and Vita Sackville West ( whose writing room is a joyous haven ) originally purchased just the farmhouse with a ' ruin ' in the grounds. Watching the dawn breaking over the tower from our farmhouse bedroom window at 4.30am was a highlight.

We learnt that members of the Bloomsbury group were easily aroused   --  in every way  --  and as I looked at the fruits of their labours, I allowed a heresy of doubt to pass through my mind about the quality of their artistic endeavours. Had they not been who they were and had all their painting been on canvas rather than bedheads and the like, would we all be ' oohing and aahing ' over their work today? But such wicked thoughts are dispelled when one looks at their murals in Berwick Church, part spiritual, part very temporal; here is a different  --  and brilliant  --  perspective. Would that Bishop Bell's wartime plan to bring more churches to life in this way had come to fruition; the dear old C of E might be a good deal better off today. Meanwhile the murals were painted on plasterboard and begin to suffer grievously.

I enjoyed skimming through some of Harold Nicolson's books in his study at Sissinghurst, particularly his own views contained in articles written about happenings in Europe in the 1930s. One article especially, in encouraging the politicians of the day to get on and do something about rising tensions and troubles ahead, he lists what are not the greatest ' problems ' in comparison with this inertia. The communists are not the immediate problem, he wrote, nor the fascists nor the Jews and it is the inclusion of this last mentioned group in the company of the others which should remind us that, in the first half of the twentieth century, anti-Semitism was not the preserve of one person, group or country. Just read the abdication statement of Kaiser (Bill) Wilhelm II after the First World War. Certain elements of respectable society all over Europe, while not condoning a holocaust, would have been happy to see the ' Jewish problem ' go away. We should not rewrite history according to our own standards, still less our own whims.

I must apologise for a hobby-horse type digression. I suspect gardens really are rather good places, keeping many of us, as they do, more profitably occupied than dabbling in things at which we think we are awfully good, like politics and ruling the world. More importantly there is, in addition to their good looks, a spiritual dimension to gardens, so important as we cover our green and pleasant land with unsightly buildings, paving slabs and astroturf and thereby deprive the bees and ourselves of some life enhancing goodness. Perhaps we should remember the words of Dorothy Frances Gurney:

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on Earth.

And, by way of a PS, the Summer Garden Tour was a solid contributor to that process. It was great fun and extremely good value.

17th July 2017