Garden Visiting Archives | James Alexander-Sinclair

I know that many of you have sat through various indulgent travelogues that I have written in this blog over the years – most of them concerning slightly eccentric jaunts to Russia. I am afraid that this is another story but this time I am on my way to China to judge a show and to give a talk to various assembled eminent horticulturists. I have never been to China before and my garden at home is full of the joys of spring so it is with mixed emotions that I pack too many shirts, a selection of striped ties and lots of charging cables and truck off to Heathrow.

Wednesday 25th: I am going to Shanghai about which I know next to nothing – there was a Bay City Rollers song called Shanghai’d in love but I don’t think that counts as a genuine cultural reference. From there I am going to a place called Haining about which I know even less except that it is the site of a flower show.

It is the grandly named World Garden Show and I am here to judge stuff and give a talk to quite a lot of Chinese horticulturists.

Thursday 9:30: I am met at the gate by a stern looking Chinese lady who escorts me through passport control and baggage claim before depositing me with three more people who put me in a car. It is like being a cross between a visiting dignitary and a prisoner under escort.
The sun is bright and my car zips along wide motorways populated by interesting trucks carrying interesting things like copper wire, watermelons, the contents of septic tanks and lots of building supplies. Shanghai seems to have cornered the market on cranes. They are everywhere. My driver says nothing but does a lot of horn honking.

Eventually we pull up at a massive resort hotel and I am ushered into a very cushty fifth floor suite. They know how to look after a chap: charming interpreters and delightful guides. I am quite knackered but push on with lunch – apparently the Chinese have lunch at 11:30 so we are unfashionably late by expecting to be fed at 1:00. We eat shrimps, broccoli, a bearded fish and very good soup with translucent phallic mushrooms floating in it.

14:00: There is a vast river at the rear of the hotel – vast to me, modest to the Chinese – which apparently has a spectacular 10m high tidal bore every so often. I cannot get at it though as there is a large fence between us so am writing this while sitting on a stone bench under a loquat tree. There are outdoor speakers unconvincingly disguised as rocks so I am listening to Simon and Garfunkel singing Scarborough Fair which seems a bit odd.

Dinner is not suitable for vegans. A couple of us opt to walk back too the hotel through the town. There is a dance class on the street every evening which is a lovely thing to watch – only women, mostly of a certain age participate. It is perfectly coordinated and very elegant. A lot of China is regimented – even the security detail at the airport and the road sweepers march onto shift in close order – but nobody seems to mind as much as we would. There is plenty of room for entrepreneurs and businesses but the government reigns supreme. All infrastructure is financed by them, all development is supervised by them and, although people are happy to outline the flaws and mistakes, they population seems mostly content with their lot.

Friday 7:00: The mystery of the breakfast buffet. I have always been confused by hotel buffets, I am never sure where to go or what to eat especially on the first day. By day three I am swaggering around juggling muffins and custom made omelettes. Chinese breakfast buffets are even more confusing as they add even more layers to the yoghurt and fruit or full cooked shebang choice. There is also pork porridge, noodles, potatoes, rice, assorted cakes in many colours, peanuts, gummy bears, weird bread, croissants, ice cream, shellfish and baked beans. Eating a fried egg with chopsticks is a challenge.

7:51: Missed the bus but caught up eventually and arrived at the show in time for judging duties. I am judging 26 plants, 16 gardens and 36 tradestands. It is fearfully hot so I am issued with a red Donald Trump style baseball cap to protect my tender imperialist bonce. There are five of us, three distinguished Chinese, a delightful Anglo-American nurseryman and me. Our deliberations are independent so no discussions or debate. This involves a great deal more mathematics than makes me comfortable.

16:30: Judging complete we stagger back to the hotel for an eccentrically mixed dinner. It includes pasta, pizza, sushi, a chocolate fountain, chicken feet, suspicious looking chops, pumpkin soup, lettuce, boiled eggs, tripe, cucumber slices and sundry other things. Chinese cuisine is always interesting.

Saturday 8:00: Bus to the convention centre which is quite large. There are various other Europeans and Americans in attendance but they all know each other well and many have been selling their wares in China for years. We all sit down in this anteroom where we are brought coffee and interpretation kit by very young, well educated people of whom there seem to be an abundance.
By this stage I am getting a tiny bit nervous as I am first up and I have absolutely no idea what to expect. The auditorium is in an enormous university and holds a thousand people, there are lots of speeches to get the whole thing launched including a bit when the assembled dignitaries (all men) lined up on stage and pushed buttons which released a lot of fanfares and flashing light action.

10:45 ‘tis done. I pranced and pontificated as is my wont and it seemed to go down okay if judged by my usual criteria which is that if nobody sleeps, interrupts or throws things then it is a resounding success. It is nice to get it over with so I can now spend the rest of the day listening to other speakers. It is always good to see how other people speak.

11:50 Lunch. I am oddly starving especially as this is becoming quite an intense day as there are a lot of talks in very quick succession. The Chinese are only half listening as they are completely obsessed with their telephones- people answer them (quietly) during talks and are endlessly checking We Chat which is the Chinese WhatsApp. WhatsApp, incidentally, is not available in China – nor is YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Google so if you wish to avoid having your data harvested you could always contemplate moving to China

18:30 A banquet. It is quite a grand affair but not terribly relaxing as every five minutes I have to stand up and drink a toast with an important local dignitary. This happens at least fifteen times during dinner – they are drinking wine and I am on the cucumber juice so at least I unfuddled. I have, however, run out of business cards so the ceremonial exchange is somewhat one sided.

The banquet has also managed to give me food poisoning. I suppose that if you to be forced to spend the greater part of the night in close communion with a lavatory then better it is caused by a banquet than a casual sarnie.

Michael, Gary and some of the many other guides and interpreters

Sunday 8:00: I wake up feeling a little wan as I bustle off to a ‘fan meeting ‘ which, disappointingly has nothing to do with the fan dance and more to do with me being asked questions by fifty assembled putative garden designers. From there we zip off to the city of Hangzhou along rose lined motorways that are quite crowded due to the fact that we have picked a public holiday for this jaunt. We wander round various sites of historical interest and inspect a tea garden all of which is interesting but would have been more interesting if I was feeling less like a flounder who had recently had a contretemps with a mangle.

Final call of the day is the office of a large landscape architecture practice where they are doing extraordinary things. Huge developments in distant cities, a revival of the rural economy through building and tourism, mansions on islands and the conversion of a power station into a complex of shops, offices, flats and parks.
Nothing in China is little or unambitious.

I thought I was just having a look around but actually was taking part in a small seminar about rural development. Until you have sat through a picture free PowerPoint presentation in Chinese for over an hour you really haven’t lived. After that I talked about I am not sure what for half an hour and answered questions about gardens, the RHS and Britain.

In the end it was great but I was quite pleased to get back for a lie down.

7:00 Monday: I am back in a cab speeding towards Shanghai airport. It has been a brief but fascinating visit: I should have stayed for a couple more days and seen more places but that is life.

This is a country of such energy, variety, vastness (there are 110 million people living in the city and suburbs of Shanghai – there are 65 million people in the whole of the UK) and potential that it is easy to see how screwed we are in the west. Makes you realise that democracy is possibly not all it is cracked up to be.

16:30 (UK time or 23:30 Shanghai time): Land at Heathrow having watched five films, eaten two indifferent meals, read half a book and written this blog).

I am listening to Rumours by Fleetwood Mac through the inflight system. I have no idea why.

I have not written a blog for ages but will makes no apologies as life is like that sometimes and I cannot always think of anything interesting about which I want to write. It would be very dull if I felt an obligation to write stuff and churned out an equivalent of my childhood diary. I think it was called the Letts Schoolboy diary and was full of interesting facts about the countries of the world and their various exports. Some of it sank in – Sierra Leone * exports diamonds, and bauxite for use in the manufacture of aluminium. The Canadian prairie provinces are Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Anyway my point is that you would get quite bored by a string of blogs that said variations on “Irish stew for lunch (yuk) then mucked around” or “nothing much happened” or “played Heatherdown: we won 2-1”.

Instead I am saving things up until the urge takes me which is usually when I am trying to distract myself from something important (but dull) or I am on a train (as I am now). I thought it would be faintly diverting to write about mud as that is a major constituent in my life at the moment. I have a number of jobs under construction and as a result a lot of this year has been spent up to my shins in various grades of mud. This means that I have become a bit of an expert in the subject and my conclusions are that no matter where the mud is situated – be it in Wiltshire, Northamptonshire or Buckinghamshire (which are the locations of my largest mud piles) – is is always annoyingly muddy.

This may lack the edge of pioneering science that some of you might expect from me but it does back up a number of historic theories. In the Middle Ages everything was muddy from people and animals to bedding and cookware. It was unavoidable due to the lack of tarmac roads and the fact that nobody had yet invented the coir doormat. Nowadays we are spoilt in that we can walk from our houses onto dry, mud free pavements and not have to worry about getting topsoil out of our underwear.

Other conclusions that I have drawn include:

Building site mud is very unlike the sort of mud one is likely to find in facial mud packs. That mud is the colour of chocolate and the texture of peanut butter: it does not smell of mould or diesel like site mud does.

The Hippopotami who sang “follow me follow, down to the hollow and there let us wallow in glooooorious mud” were also thinking of a completely different calibre of mud.

No matter how careful you may be you will always get mud on your trousers – often a loose splattering that looks as if it has been flicked at you.

So that is what I have learned. Underneath the mud, however, interesting things are happening and some fine and handsome gardens are likely to eventually emerge. I look forward to sharing them with you over the next couple of years as they gradually come into their own. In the meantime I will continue to slosh about in the goo, happy as Larry**

I am listening to The Ballad of Ira Hayes by Johnny Cash. The picture is of a daffodil field in Cornwall – lest we forget that spring is coming.

* Sierra Leone, incidentally was the answer to a question that marks one of my greatest achievements (and greatest disappointments). Years ago I was on Celebrity Eggheads and beat CJ (the one who may have murdered somebody by pushing them into a canal) with a question whose answer was Sierra Leone.

** Larry, for those of you who ever wondered is the Australian boxer Larry Foley who, 1879, retired undefeated at 32 having banked a decent wedge. Thus he was deemed to be pretty content with his lot.

August is always a slightly flat month.

Most gardens are having a breather, people tend to swan off on holidays in exotic places where they dabble their toes in the ocean and drink things whose alcohol content is cunning disguised in a purée of papaya (I am looking at you Ann- Marie Powell). I tend to stay at home especially this year when this place is still a work in progress.

I have, however, decided that I am in danger of becoming slightly stale and as a result have decided that I need to go and visit some gardens. It is important to see stuff, otherwise there is the possibility of being so inverted in one’s view that you find yourself repeating the same combinations and making the same gardens. And that would be fearfully dull.

So, yesterday I tootled off to the Oxford Botanic Gardens where I was lucky enough to get a bit of a guided tour. It was my first visit – which just goes to show what a rubbish garden visitor I am – even though I have been to Oxford countless times in the last forty years. The first time was to visit a friend who lived in a bedsit on the high street (I think he was retaking an A level) where we used to boil eggs in the electric kettle – the secret is to suspend them above the element in a handkerchief: a trick I have never forgotten- but never used.

Anyway, let us return to the point. The Oxford Botanic Gardens has been there since the seventeenth century (i) and is basically a learning garden. There are family beds where the plants are all laid out according to botanical leanings. I am not sure whether this is the place for a lecture in basic botany ( nor am I sure that I am the person best qualified to deliver such a lecture bearing in mind that I got an E in ‘O’ level biology) but plants are classified by kingdom, phylum,class, series, family, genus & species. You have the internet, look it up… There are other beds that edge towards the physic garden where the plants are laid out according to the diseases they are used to treat – oncology, haematology etc etc. All this is all very well but there is no indication anywhere of this – I only know because I have seen such things before and I was told by the director.

This is an interesting point – none of us really want to have our garden visiting interrupted by ginormous signs and interpretation boards but in some cases a bit of guidance would be helpful. Otherwise there is a danger that people wander past and think that such and such a bed is really just a badly planted, mismatched border rather than an aid to scholarship. I think the problem is that the intellectual heft of all concerned is such that they naturally assume that everybody is as clever as they are and of course they will understand: in reality most of the paying visitors are after a nice walk, some flowers and somewhere to eat their sandwiches.

That may all sound a bit tart but it is not intended to be – the plants are healthy and to the point, the beds are crisply edged with good quality steel and the surrounding walls and architecture is, of course, amazing. Sometimes gardens and parks in cities are intended to be a refuge from the surrounding buildings – not so here where the glimpses of towers and spires are an important part of the garden. Mind you, Oxford is not Hull.(ii)

Further on is a fine vegetable garden – whose produce is taken to the homeless shelter – a good stacked herbaceous border and some slightly tired glasshouses containing some really good plants. I liked the wet house in particular with its crowd of Amazon lilies, papyrus and other things that I did not recognise but were satisfyingly damp and steamy. The cactus greenhouse, however, was a bit shabby. I think the plan is to replace all of them soon but before that can happen then some serious funds must be raised. Oxford, like every garden/museum/monument/church/public institution is short of cash for things that are not considered, by some, essential.

At this time of year, however, the main event are the Merton borders which are fizzing with prairie goodness. Echinacea, Solidagos, Eryngiums, Grasses, Silphiums (iii) and the rest. It is the work of the good Prof, James Hitchmough. He has done some amazing work in many places – most notably in the Olympic park in East London – his work is always spectacular and looks much easier than it actually is- to establish such a thing from seed involves a lot of sterilisation, weeding, sand beds, jute nets and small bags of very expensive seed. The question is that for a proportion of the year this sort of planting looks, if I may be frank, a bit shit. The dilemma is whether you water down the joyful spectacularness of the summer months in order to give the visitors something to look at in the off months. One problem I have always had with gardens is the urge to have ‘year round interest’ which invariably means giving over some of your precious space to hefty evergreens which look unutterably dreary during the summer months.

This style of gardening tends to have a different problem – amazing in summer but a bit rubbish in winter and spring. I know that there will be seedbeds to shimmer in the frost (I have written lots of pieces like that) but have you ever counted the number of days when the frost is sufficiently dry and cold to enable said shimmering? Last winter there were none and most years there are maybe three or four. Unless of course you live somewhere properly cold. I also understand that it needs to be a bit barren in early spring in order to make maintenance simpler – they run over the borders with a blowtorch to burn off pesky weeds. The other problem is that if you introduce trees or shrubs then you get higher shade and the mixtures have to be tweaked which may interfere with the geographical purity of the scheme.

Tricky: but finding an answer will be interesting.

So (iv), in summary a very interesting and exciting garden to visit, you should all go if you get the chance. The parking is non-existent but the gardens are only short hop from everywhere. Reminder to self – get out more. Also try to pick a less grey day – borders like this need blue skies. Website here.

I am listening to Pick up the Tempo by Waylon Jennings.

(i) Oddly there is a yew there which bears a sign saying it was planted in, I think, 1645 which makes it three hundred and something years old. I was very struck by how slim it was for its age. I rather expected it to be at least thickening around the midriff as it sloped into middle age. Not at all, it remained slim and toned.

(ii) you see, unlike other blogs, if you come here you get deeply insightful geographically based philosophy.

(iii) which the spellcheck on my iPad reads as ‘dolphins’. Not the same thing at all.

(iv) I know. I also was told that was bad form to start a sentence with “So”. Tough. My sentence, my choice.

You know those days when one thing tips the whole day into chaos? I suppose it is inevitable really: a cross between Rabbie Burns(i) and the Butterfly flapping its pesky wings above the forests of Brazil.

I spend quite a lot of time driving. More time, even ,than I spend on trains. Last Friday was a marathon and I still feel a little wan. I began by driving from here (Northamptonshire) to Worcestershire where I needed to chivvy some electricians and organise some sturdy fellows who were planting some large trees and a hefty hedge. From there a reasonably short hop to Warwickshire to talk about more trees (and roses, fences, lakes, wildflowers,bulbs and hedges). From there to Suffolk for more chatting and arm waving before returning home in time for slumping.

All went well until about 8:30 in the morning when I found out that the tree chaps would not turn up until 10am. I went to buy a broom in Evesham to fill the time but after that my schedule was completely shot – before it had even begun. Hey-Ho. Apart from the client meetings (which were all very satisfactory, thank you very much for asking) the following interesting things happened…….

Nothing.Rien.Nada.

This is unfortunate for a blog that feeds off trivial happenings (ii). In this case an entire day when the most interesting thing was a short shower of rain and stopping for a pee at a large Tescos just off the A14.

So, it was fortunate then that I was due to do some light garden visiting this week so I do not have to invent something dubious about which to write. I was invited by the garden world’s equivalent of teen sensation Olly Murs: Mr Christopher Young the ed of The Garden to accompany him on a visit to Boughton House which, conveniently, lies equidistant between our houses. For those who do not know, it is a whopping great pile owned by the Dukes of Buccleuch since the sixteenth century (although, of course, they were not Dukes at that stage of proceedings: those of you who wish to research their genealogy may peel off at this stage and go here. The rest of you, follow me…)

The landscape at Boughton is all about trees and views and water: originally there were lots of parterres and paths and formal ponds but over the years they have vanished. There are long rides that disappear off towards distant churches and a remarkable system of canals. These are a series of perfect rectangular waterways dug in the Eighteenth Century in order to divert the river into something rectilinear and formal. They had become a bit choked over the years so in 2006 a programme of restoration was begun: silt was removed, weirs and sluices repaired and the banks lined with oak. They are extraordinarily lovely and slice through the landscape with the litheness and elegance of a bonefish (except,obviously, a bit slower).

At the same time the Mount was cleared of trees (except a fabulous Cedar that is where the herons nest) and resculpted. Many of you will be aware that the very clever Kim Wilkie has been doing stuff at Boughton, in particular an enormous hole called Orpheus. This is a peculiarly lovely piece of work that in size and shape perfectly matches the mount: in negative. Orpheus descends, the mount rises.

Badda-bing,Badda-boom.

Perfect, Impressive, Majestic and Splendid. It is the sort of thing that makes one sigh from the pleasure of it all. And I did..

But…

As well as this arpeggio of austerity there is a further construction: just beside Orpheus is a stainless steel cubic framework and an illustration in stone and water of the Golden Section. The idea is to show the science of proportion and all that jazz. I think it is an unnecessary conceit that ruins the clarity of the earth works. It is like a magician who, after performing a perfect illusion then proceeds to whip out a whiteboard and explain how very clever it all is. It removes the mystery of the landscape and should not be there. By all means show your workings, if you must, draw a map if you have to but do it somewhere else, not in the middle of one of the finest vistas in the country.

Please.

Apparently it is there in order to stimulate debate, if that is the case it has served its purpose. I contend that it should be elsewhere: that is my contribution to the debate. Go and see it to decide for yourselves, you will not be disappointed.

The picture is of some Iris reticulata behaving as if they were Meryl Streep at Lyme Regis in the French Lieutenant’s Woman

I am listening to Hey,That’s No way To say Goodbye by Leonard Cohen.

(i) But Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy!

(ii) One of my many Spammy friends has sent me an email offering to “shop online for a pen enlargement patch”. This was an offer I could not refuse and my humble Bic is now a whopping great Jumbo Indelible Marker.