I did a double take when I glanced at the magazine photos of our sunken garden as it was in 2003. Surely, I thought, the Chusan palms can’t have grown THAT much. Back then they were stubbly little things, no more than 4ft tall. Now they are at least 12 feet. That’s a foot a year. Some going.
Chusan palms are hardy anywhere in England, but they seem particularly suited to this part of the north west. A sign of just how hardy they are can be seen at the Newby Bridge Hotel, where I planted two of them in 1997. The climate there, at the southern tip of Lake Windermere is much colder and much wetter than it is here in Grange, but both are perfectly happy.
The ground around my Chusan Palms (Trachycarpus Fortuneii) is now spattered with yellow seeds which have fallen from the flowers. Some of these will germinate and its a comforting thought that they may, in my lifetime, grow into substantial trees- quite a different story from the Sago palms about which I wrote last week – Cycad Seeds
Not many people know it, but England won the World Cup last year- the Gardening World Cup that is.
This year the competition is even more fierce, with gardeners from all five continents taking part. Last year’s winner, Andy Sturgeon, is taking a rest this year as a competitor, but is returning as a judge. His place as the senior English competitor is taken by Sarah Eberle who won her 8th RHS gold medal at Chelsea this year with her stunning Monaco garden.
I’m very proud to have been chosen as the other English competitor and I’m going to take a slice of the Lake District to Japan with a garden which will feature a Cumbrian Dabbin.
This video is a clip from Lookaround, the regional news programme which is shown after the ITN early evening news, in which intrepid reporter Hannah Lomas in a piece about last year’s event, takes the footballing metaphor to its furthest extreme by calling me “The David Beckham of Gardening”. It’s very entertaining and I hope we have as much fun this year.
Cycads are sexy trees. Unusually, they are either male or female, with the males producing very phallic-like cones and the females bearing seeds. This photo is of a female Cycad in our orangery, which has just produced seeds, which resemble furry orange eggs. If you shake the seed pods you can hear the seed rattling inside.
This particular Cycad (Cycas Revoluta, also known as the Sago Palm, although it isn’t a palm) is one of several which we used to keep outside, in the Gravel Garden. But they can’t really cope with our cold wet weather and after a few winters outside they began to look very sad. When the Orangery was built, we brought them inside and after a year of warmth they began to recover. Now they’re in perfect health.
Cyads grow very slowly, almost imperceptibly, and although in their native Japan they will grow to a height of several metres and will develop multiple stems, they never grow to full maturity in this country. Is it, then, worthwhile planting the seed? Well, if by chance the seed were to germinate, there is no chance of it growing to more than two or three feet in height in my lifetime. It may become a fully developed tree by the time my grandchildren (who aren’t born yet) reach middle age. In that case there’s no time to waste- let’s get that seed planted.
After Crug Farm’s triumph at Chelsea, another of our plant suppliers, Cath’s Garden Plants, has won a Gold and “Best in Show”- this time at the RHS “Gardener’s World Live”. Cath’s Garden Plants are just up the road from us, at Sizergh, on the outskirts of Kendal. In the old days they were known as Heaves Nursery and were a specialist wholesale nursery. They supplied a good proportion of our perennials when we were first getting started 11 years ago. At that time their prices were so reasonable that we wondered how they could do it. I think its fair to say that if it hadn’t been for the good value they offered we wouldn’t have been able to afford to stock the garden. Quality will out- they now have a retail side and prices have caught up- but they are still bloody good value- and, as we now know, the best in the country to boot.
It’s almost Midsummer’s Day and a time of glut in the garden. Or do I mean gluttony. At last we have an abundance of choice- as much choice as in any supermarket, except that ours is fresh and wholesome.
The fruit harvest has been helped along by the abundant rain, especially the gooseberries, which are bigger and sweeter than we have ever known. The only crop which has disappointed is the cherries, which have split- apparently the splitting is caused by too much rain, but I’m happy to leave them to the birds.
The fell road along Gummers Howe is one of the loveliest in the Lake District. The fells here are mainly forested, but where there are gaps you can see views to Lake Windermere on one side and Morecambe Bay on the other. The woodland, known as Chapel House Wood, is owned by the Forestry Commission, whose job it is not only to look after the woodland but also to protect the wildlife.
They’ve fallen down badly on both counts. The photo shows where they have cleared timber, leaving the fells looking like a battlefield. But their biggest crime has been in failing to protect the red squirrel in one of their last habitats in the South Lakes. When I first began to commute along this road 11 years ago red squirrels were a common sight and it was joy to see them. Now they have been wiped out and the greys have taken over. One of the main platforms of the campaign to protect the Forestry Commission earlier this year was the claim that they were there to protect the habitat of the red squirrel. This was one of the many untruths told on their behalf, as the scandal of Chapel House Wood illustrates.
James Alexander Sinclair, the very entertaining gardening journalist, has achieved quite a coup in getting the Sunday Times to devote a whole page in their gardening section to the sale of his home, Blackpitts.
The reason given for the sale is that he and his wife Celestia want to downsize now that their two older children have left home, but the accompanying photos of the garden give the game away. The garden is dominated by a lawn which is studded with what the author Caroline Donald describes as “giant green Mars bars” This rather bizarre description refers to large beech columns which are dotted about the lawn. These columns give the game away- the real reason why they want to flee Blackpitts is that they can’t face another winter looking out onto them. Beech looks gorgeous when it first bursts into leaf in May and stays looking good all summer but it has the unfortunate characteristic of not shedding its leaves in the autumn, so when the leaves turn brown they just stick there. Which means that for six months of the year you aren’t looking out onto lovely green foliage but onto a brown mess.
That, no doubt, is where Caroline Donald got her image of “giant Mars bars”. I don’t blame the Alexander-Sinclairs for wanting to escape and can only hope that they find a buyer before the autumn.
I heard a scream and one of my girls came running out of the computer room. “There’s a massive spider on my keyboard” she cried. One of the pleasures of being a Dad is being able to deal with crises like this, which I did by grabbing the spider by its legs and flinging it out of the window, alive (just).
It’s a natural reaction to be scared of spiders, mice, bats and all small creepy creatures. The final episode of The Hotel included a hilarious scene when several housekeepers ran screaming when they saw a baby bat crawling along the corridor of the Damson Dene Hotel. I said at the time that it was a racing certainty that we would hear from some do-gooder pointing out that it is a criminal offence to harm a bat and sure enough, to my great amusement we did. They said, completely seriously, that we should have a programme in place to train our staff how to deal with bats.
What these idiots don’t appreciate is that the whole of Cumbria and much of the UK is alive with bats and that the laws to protect them do more harm than good (see my posting of November 30th 2010). How much harm has become apparent this week when a stray bat brought down a bank. The unfortunate bank is the Southsea Bank, based in Havant. The bank’s chairman, Bernard Stanley, explained that the bank had lent money to a property company, which was converting a building into 10 apartments- “We were very unlucky. Some chap from Natural Heritage happened to be passing when a bat flew out. Because of this construction of the flats was stopped for six months. No bats were found, but by the time the apartments were completed the market had gone flat”. The failure of the property company led to the collapse of the bank, which the government has refused to bail out. There will be compensation from the taxpayer for all depositors with balances up to £85,000, but any deposits over that amount will be lost. Which means that some people have lost most of their life savings. Even that, I’m sure, isn’t enough to wipe the smile of self satisfaction from the face of the man from Natural Heritage.
Tucked away behind the Damson Dene Hotel, underneath the Leisure Club is an old decrepit store room which nobody visits. Walking past earlier today, I was surprised to hear what appeared to be a party going on. I popped my head in and there amongst the old abandoned sofas and mattresses, was the astonishing sight of Wayne sounding very much like Elvis! In fact so much like Elvis, that I wondered for a moment whether he was miming into the microphone. Could this be the same person, who, only a fortnight ago was seen shirtless in his caravan singing an off-key Band of Gold to his faithful dog Fly? This, it turns out, was the key to his clandestine crooning. Wayne had been so shocked to hear his singing voice on TV, that he was determined to get it back into shape. This video shows what a brilliant job he’s done and I think the time is right for him to bring his singing out of the shadows.
Mamihlapinatapai means “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to initiate”. It comes from the Yaghan language, which is used by the natives of Tierra del Fuego, or, to be more accurate, one native of Tierra del Fuego, as there is only one speaker of the language still alive. The word has a place in the Guinness Book of Records, as being the world’s most succinct word- that is the word which contains the most meaning in the fewest letters.
In this Youtube video a young Australian girl with captivating blue eyes explains the meaning of mamihlapinatapai and why she loves the word. The video forms part of a film, soon to be released, called “Life in a Day” which is made up entirely of short videos recorded by ordinary people all over the world saying what was important to them on one particular day, Saturday 24th July 2010. 81,000 videos were submitted. The Australian girl speaks of her regret at the loss of a language which contains this beautiful word. It’s a lovely video and Life in a Day promises to be a lovely film.
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials Thoreau
The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food and extend them to life in general. Here in the Lake District where I live with my wife and three daughters, we have a garden where we grow our own food. We know full well that this is an inefficient and expensive way of organising our lives but we do it because we enjoy it and because it forces us to eat healthily and in season. It is slow, because gardening is all about patience.
The principles of Slow Food are "good, clean and fair" - 'good' means that the food should be of good quality, 'clean' means that it should be free of pesticides or harmful chemicals, 'fair' means that when you buy from a farmer, you pay him a decent price. Supermarkets and the large chain stores routinely break all these principles, which is why we, as a family, don't use them. Slow food means also taking the time and trouble to cook the food yourself and to take pleasure in eating it with your family and friends. I like the idea of extending the principles of Slow Food to life in general with the aim of achieving a good work/life balance.
This blog of my Slow Life is mainly about my garden in the Lake District, but also about my hotels, where I earn my living, and about the occasional forays, which my Slow Life allows, into the worlds of design, music and local affairs.
There's also quite a lot in this blog about Japan and the Japanese. This is because I admire their way of life and the fact that the Japanese, more than any other nation, are trying to embrace the Slow Life, even to the extent of having Slow Cities.
