Human Flower Project

The Turn and a Chamomile Lawn


With the mulch hoed in and everything to look forward to, John Levett declares (and snaps) early spring in Cambridge.


imageGarden with a meadow history

Little St. Mary’s

Cambridge, England

Photo: John Levett



By John Levett

I have to hurry.  I have a note on my desk: “Don’t let the year run away from you!” There’s a note in my (occasional) diary: “Yesterday saturday 14th. february at about 5.00 p.m. … the year turned!” No time to waste.

It’s the first time that I’ve noticed a year turning. What I mean by that is a catch of the light and the catch of the light on brick and over water: an indication that whatever happens now Winter has been used up. There may be snow falls on the Celtic fringes but nothing that’ll call out the troops; there’ll be dull days and ‘February fill dyke’ isn’t quite over but growth has begun. Made it through to another Spring.

That’s what brought forth the idea of the year running away. The new light’s metaphorical as well as actual—lights went out on the undone stuff round about November 1st. Undone stuff’s still undone but nobody died from being undone so undone can stay undone. On with the new start, the season’s rushing and I must keep up.

Why?

The garden’s Why. For the past three years I have been involved in providing a series of lecture and seminar courses. Prep for them started from scratch and sitting down has become the normal mode of activity rather than prancing and dancing. My garden is largely a once-and-for-all early Summer rush; leave it alone for a day and you’ll play catchup. It’s won for some seasons now; but not this. Winter pruning was done before Christmas, everything tied in, all beds hoed, all beds disinfected. Mulch came at end of January and hoed in for February. The first rose feed’s done. Lectures are all finished. I have the chance of daily pottering—the gardener’s goal.

It isn’t daily but it’s pretty close. I’m beginning to simplify. I can walk around avoiding arguments with thorns, brush off soil from iris corms, give space for early bulbs, feel I’ve got some hold on the confusion. I can see myself tying in the flapping shoot before it clouts me, repot some alpines before death, keep a pathway visible, get to the potting shed without GPS. I can feel like a gardener, not a Berlin airlift. Less of a struggle to sit in it. I’ll see if it lasts.

So what goes on elsewhere? Anything other than crocuses? I’ll go out and have a look …

(Later that same day)

image

The sap is rising—and tries to draw a crowd in Sydney St., Cambridge

Photo: John Levett

I found Faith, Hope and Charity all in Sydney Street, all looking for an audience; Faith perched on a waste bin with menacing sidekick (maybe God) promising serious death unless … you know the rest; Hope singing tuneful tunes a million miles away from anything that’d upset the kids; Charity looking embarrassed at the dressing up needed for collecting charity in straightened times. No consumers crawling in the gutter yet; maybe the upturn’s begun.

imageBerries at the doorway, Riverside

Photo: John Levett



I found willows coming into leaf next to fresh boathouses; stuff on the roofs of narrow boats, echoes of Roses & Castles, the origin of which I’ve never got the hang of but suspect it may have been a retail ploy of a Victorian Tesco; neatly discarded bridesmaid’s bouquets on the towpath; fresh berries on Riverside; fresh brick to pave the front garden & fresh front gardens before the paving. Something struggled to rise above the dead in St. Andrew’s churchyard and a tree struggled against the lash opposite. The ‘new-builds’ (looking like a Romanian Five Year Plan product but assuredly ‘Award winning’) near Stourbridge Common have a landscape in mind to match the pre-foundations publicity snaps.

Turn away from the river and off into town. Here’s Westcott House. Whoopee!

Westcott House began in the 1880s as a training college for the Anglican clergy and Westcott himself was a Professor of Divinity in the University. He left a nice garden behind. I only discovered this last year and it’s worth following through the seasons.

image

Westcott House, late February 2009

Photo: John Levett

It’s not so much that the garden leaps— rather it’s the setting that does. There are moments when I could see myself as a Victorian Reverend Someone. Not too reverend, rather the sort who had more of an interest in the genus Rosa & spent much retirement time ministering to it—the Reverend Joseph Pemberton my model. The garden wins from the red brick surrounding, seats are to be had, much is to come into flower; bring sandwiches, a Thermos, a copy of Matthew Arnold. Gerard Manley Hopkins would be fine and dandy. Back in another season.

imageLittle St. Mary’s

Photo: John Levett



Little St. Mary’s is another find too. It’s next to Peterhouse College on Trumpington Road and it’s the little sister of (Surprise!) Great St. Mary’s a few hundred metres away on Market Hill. I discovered it by chance last year too,  and a gardening friend of mind says it’s a gem. It has the feeling of a planned idea that grew out of bounds; history confirms this. It’s bounded by a passage that leads down to the river, a passageway mostly residential with one remaining (and enigmatic) shop front. It’s a garden easily missed and dismissed.

Its boundaries shade it and it can easily pass itself off during out-of-season as an afterthought. It has a meadow history which still pushes through. I have a chequered history of association with wild flowers. Around the age of nine to ten I spent a complete summer creating a collection book for a school project of pressed wild flowers (somewhat frowned upon these conservation-style days by the conservation-style shock troops but passed over in the casual 1950s). I named them, located them, mounted them, took ’em to school and got told by my teacher that the project had finished—no look-through, no encouragement, no surprise in the face, no joy—just ‘Finished.’ That sort of thing stays. I still hurt!

Sometimes you only get over it by going back. I’ll tool-up with book & camera. As I remember you have to shift swiftly with these wild things—bloom in an afternoon thence to seed overnight. I have the time & St. Mary’s (Little) has seats. I’ll wait; less of an Arnold or Hopkins place this, more John Keble. It has a chamomile lawn too; now that’s rare.

imageKing’s Chapel,

with crocus carpet

Photo: John Levett



I walked back towards town, picked up a Chelsea bun at Fitzbillies (one-hundred percent of my annual sugar intake) and stopped at the end of King’s Parade. Outside the chapel is a tree so heavy with itself that it’s layered its own branches (or so it seems to me). The essential ubiquitous Genus Crocus sprayed itself underneath in numbers to make it Springish.

Enough sauntering. I needed paint brush cleaner and toilet rolls.

Back home with bun and nuclear-strength tea I wondered if I’d gone looking for Spring too early or if we just don’t do Spring on these islands. Or maybe I just associate Spring with something else. I like the ‘almost nothingness’ of Spring. I went outside and everything’s neat and waiting. Well … almost neat. I replant the bulbs seemingly every Autumn because I’ve never got the hang of bulbs. I’ve got the books and a ruler but I always go for the centre of the earth of perched on top like a birthday candle. I tried bulbs in pots this year to limit my depth obsession. I have a lanky iris and a dozen others that might be something else—a nation holds its breath.

The rest of the garden is budding. It’s a moment I like; the plot’s refreshed and refreshing. This could just be the best season ever, the finest Spring that segues into a Summer beyond memory. It’s not far off now that I annually trekked down to Ingwersen’s alpine nursery in Sussex. A steam railway ran past at the bottom of the plot and, if you’d a mind to (and I had), you could play The Railway Children all day. I always bought too many plants; alpines are always irresistible despite my history of failure to last the course. Failure never stopped me but garden commerce seemingly has. Ingwersen’s was put up for sale last Spring and I can find nothing on its survival. There’s always Pottertons in the Lincolnshire Wolds but I loved the trip down to the downland.

imageTomb in bloom,

St. Andrew’s graveyard

Photo: John Levett



A friend tells me that alpine gardening is daft unless you live on an alp, which logic would mean only grow reeds if you live in Fenland, grow bog if you live in the Marshland, grow scree if you live on a Fell, nothing if you live in Docklands (Dock’s too obvious even for me). There’s stubborn, obstinate and dogged in every gardener and often ill-informed and frequently daft. The annual trawl through the seed list illustrates all of these; trying the unlikely and the hopeful; the remembrance of something once seen on an exhibition bench; the black and white greenhouse-bench pic in an early-edition Penguin handbook.

I’ve got here E.B. Anderson’s 1959 Penguin ‘Rock Gardens’. It was a present for Christmas that year from Alison and Andrew to David McLintock; it has his library plate ‘Virtute et Labore.’ The frontispiece is titled ‘A good, small Rock Garden’; it omits ‘which could also host a slalom.’ Plate 11 shows ‘Materials for potting alpine plants’; take the truck to collect crocks, coarse leaf mould, finer leaf mould, loam, peat, coarse limestone chippings, coarse grit, mixed grit, fine grit, fine silver sand. You’ll need your basic trowel, two sizes of fern trowel, a two-pronged fork, a three-pronged fork, a dibber, a cutting-out knife, a miniature seedling trowel and a pocket knife. There’ll be an ash bed, reserve bed and propagating greenhouse. By the time you’ve got past ‘Collecting’ (only two-and-a-bit pages?) it would be just too easy to go buy a plant. How could it ever be your own?

I need another Five-Year Plan. You can never have too many.


Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/08 at 08:19 PM

Comments

What is the species of tree outside King’s chapel?

Posted by Georgia (localecology.org) on 03/11 at 11:51 PM
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.