I would have completely forgotten about Daphne Phelps’ book, “A House in Sicily” if it wasn’t for the mouse. We were doing some spring cleaning (a tip- don’t leave it for five years, things can get out of hand) when I found that a mouse had whiled away an afternoon by chewing away at the edges of a newspaper cutting which I’d roughly inserted into the book. Fortunately, the book itself was unharmed.

“A House in Sicily” is about Casa Cuseni, the Arts and Crafts house and garden created by Robert Kitson in Taormina, Sicily, which Daphne Phelps had inherited and looked after for 50 years. The garden is one of several outstanding gardens in Italy created by English men (and women) and is worthy to be mentioned alongside Thomas Hanbury’s ‘La Mortola’, Lady Walton’s ‘La Mortella’ and Ellen Willmott’s ‘La Boccanegra’, but stands out amongst them in that its name isn’t redolent of death or darkness.

My plans to look at the garden when I visited Taormina a few years ago were unfortunately thwarted by the girl at the Tourist Information Centre, where I’d gone to ask for directions. She looked positively alarmed when I mentioned Casa Cuseni. “You won’t get in”, she said, “And if you try to the owner will shout abuse at you”. The owner in question was Daphne Phelps, the author of the book. She was now elderly, and retired, but for most of her life had run Casa Cuseni as an upmarket guest house. Her instructions to the TiC to deter any potential visitors with threats of abuse was no doubt the result of a lifetime spent in hospitality. I know how she feels. She died the following year, and it was her obituary which I had carelessly inserted into her book and which the mice had chewed at.

“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I arrived home last night an owl flew in front of my headlights, which pleased me mightily, not simply because owls are magnificent creatures but because the presence of an owl means the absence of mice.

Mice are insidious pests in the garden, the more annoying because the damage they do is below the surface of the soil, so you aren’t aware of it until it’s too late.  They like to nibble at roots and bulbs.  Two or three generations ago every gardener kept enough strychnine and arsenic in the potting shed to keep mice at bay and Poirot busy for a lifetime, but poisons wouldn’t do in the kitchen garden.  What would?  One idea was to use the device pictured above, which shows a brick being suspended by a piece a string, which the mouse nibbles through, whereupon the brick falls and squashes it.  This was described in Gardening Illustrated as “the most simple, inexpensive, and surest mouse-catcher ever invented”*.  On the same page in the magazine is a letter from a reader in which he tells of the fun to be had hunting slugs, which are baited with piles of bran:  ”My sporting time is early morning (before breakfast) and evening, and I cut the slugs in two with a knife.  I can safely say that with twopennyworth of bran, dotted down on my rockery, I have killed considerably over 1,000 in a few days, and still they come, only much smaller in size”.

*Gardening Illustrated October 11th, 1879

On 15th March 1879, William Robinson shook up the gardening press by launching a new weekly paper, priced at 1 penny and aimed fairly and squarely at the amateur gardener.  He called the paper “Gardening Illustrated” and seven months later he was boasting: “Our weekly issue is now larger than that of the whole of the horticultural press of the United Kingdom combined”. Of course, in the days before circulation figures were published, there was no evidence for this assertion and it was hotly contested by his rivals.

Gardening Illustrated was launched during the craze for subtropical gardening, which Robinson himself had done so much to promote with his book, “The Subtropical Garden.”  But the public were beginning to realise that exotic plants don’t always survive in our climate and one of the early articles dealt with the problem of what to do with the trunks of dead tree ferns.  Nowadays most people would throw them away but the Victorians had more imaginative ideas.  Robinson recommended using the trunks to display ferns, with a large fern such as a Nephrolepsis or a Lomaria gibba (now known as a Blechnum gibbum) placed in a hole scooped out of the top, with smaller ferns stuck into the trunk along the side.

This is a problem very close to my heart, and I suspect, thousands of others, after last winter.  The photo above shows my tree ferns looking splendid after the first snowfall of winter, but the prolonged cold finished them off, so I was left with 6 lifeless stems. My solution, suggested to me by Mike Tullis of Inglefield Plants (himself the latest in a long line of Victorians), was to decorate the stem with Fascicularia bicolor.   I think it looks good.  All I need to do now is scoop out the top and insert a large fern for that William Robinson look.

]]> http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2012/01/18/dead-tree-ferns/feed/ 0 http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2012/01/09/mrs-beeton-and-jamie-oliver-the-bogus-cook-and-the-pretend-gardener/ http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2012/01/09/mrs-beeton-and-jamie-oliver-the-bogus-cook-and-the-pretend-gardener/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:22:33 +0000 jonathandenby http://www.slow-life.co.uk/?p=2499

When I was fresh out of university and even more naive than I am now I came across a family called Elliot who published a series of books known as “Elliot’s Right Way” books, each written by a different expert in their field. They covered dozens of topics, from driving to bridge to gardening. I was amazed to find that the names of the experts were made up and that each and every one of the books were written by Elliot himself or one of his two sons. They were massively popular and earned a fortune for the Elliot family.

It was a similar story with Mrs Beeton, author of the famous cookbook. Her husband was a publisher and he got his wife, who couldn’t cook to save her life, to pretend to be an expert and together they cobbled together a cookbook relying entirely on the expertise of others. Lots of howlers crept in, such as advice to cook carrots for 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 hours. Mr Beeton went on to produce a gardening manual under his wife’s name, which was ridiculed in the gardening magazines.

The Beeton story came to mind today when I read that Jamie Oliver has been named as one of the country’s most influential gardeners*. Now, there are two things we can say with certainty about Jamie Oliver. The first is that he can cook (unlike Mrs Beeton). The second is that he’s no gardener. He’s been named as an influential gardener because the DIY store, Homebase, have employed him as their new face. It happens that I’m a regular at Homebase (see - http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2011/11/11/over-wintering-cannas/) and I’ve seen ‘Jamie Oliver’ branded plants on sale there. I thought they were poor quality and over-priced, and I’ve got a feeling that that view was shared by others, as they featured prominently in the half-price “bargain corner”, looking rather worse for wear.

Influential Jamie Oliver may be, but it’s a poor sort of influence if the product is as bogus as the name of the author on an “Elliot Right Way” book.

*The Telegraph, “Meet Britain’s Most Influential Gardeners“, by Tim Richardson.

“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
Were her first years the golden age? That’s true,
But now she’s gold oft tried and ever new”.
John Donne, The Autumnal

Until a few days ago the leaves of this Acer palmatum had been a deep purple.  Then, after a few nights of frost they have turned into gold. The intense cold has destroyed the chlorophyll pigment in the leaves, making them change colour.  The frosty nights have been followed by bright sunny days, which have helped the leaves to produce sugar which has in turn made use of the anthocyanin pigment which gives the leaves their bright colour.

The north of England isn’t of course the best place to see this effect and it isn’t guaranteed to happen every year.  You need the right combination of cold nights and sunny days.  For the real McCoy you need to be in New England or Japan.  When I was in Kyoto earlier this month I saw some stunning photos of how the Maples (most of them bright red) will look in November.  I hope to see them some day, but in the meantime I’ll make the most of what autumn has given us this year.

]]> http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2011/10/26/autumn-glory/feed/ 0 http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2011/10/17/begonia-red-undies/ http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2011/10/17/begonia-red-undies/#comments Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:47:29 +0000 jonathandenby http://www.slow-life.co.uk/?p=2145 In my three weeks away, I didn’t once switch on the TV or see an English newspaper and didn’t miss them one bit. On the other hand, I did miss my garden and it was a big disappointment to get back and find that the tomatoes had finished. But the flower garden, in spite of the onset of autumn, is still going strong. There’s colour everywhere, from the maples, which are turning a dark red, to the dahlias and cannas. At this time of year you expect the hybrid dahlias to start showing signs of wear and tear, but the tree dahlias are just getting into their stride and are covered in flowers.

I was particularly impressed by a clump of Begonia sinensis, pictured here, in full flower. I bought one or two of these plants a few years ago from Crug Farm Plants and they have spread so easily that they now provide ground cover in several shady places in the garden. They are called “Red Undies”, because the underside of the leaf is a dark red. They’ll carry on until they are struck down by frost, and in spite of their exotic appearance they are completely hardy.

England may not have many 3 Star Michelin restaurants but everyone would agree that we are, by a long margin, the undisputed kings of gardening. Is this reputation deserved? My guess would be that if the gardening equivalents of the Michelin inspectors were to come to Japan we would be in for an unwelcome surprise. Our respective styles are very different and it may be difficult to make an objective comparison, but I think the Japanese have the edge in craftsmanship, artistry and year-round interest. After my brief visit to Kyoto (see yesterday’s entry) I’ve resolved to seek out the 10 best gardens in Japan and compare them with the 10 best in England to see for myself whether the Japanese can beat us at gardening as they have beaten the French at cooking.

The consequence of this shortage of land is that the Japanese live in much smaller and much more expensive homes than we do. Most live in flats; gardens are rare. At least they have the comfort of knowing that the situation isn’t going to get worse, because their population is falling, owing to a declining birth rate. In the UK, in contrast, the population is rising fast, mainly due to the open door policy to European immigration, and their high birth rate. New houses are needed for these extra millions. We have plenty of space to build them without making a dent into our green and pleasant land. When I left England there was a massive campaign under way against the proposals to make it easier to build more houses. When you see what the Japanese have to put up with you can only thank God that at least we have the choice, and yes, we can build as many houses as we need without making any appreciable impact on our green and pleasant land.

This is me 20 years on. Alan Ward used the mould which he had taken of me on August 5th (see http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2011/08/05/making-mr-mcgregor/), added a few wrinkles, white hair and a beard to create Mr McGregor. I’m happy to say that it looks nothing like me, but it’s a sobering thought that I’m going to get more and more like it when I look in the mirror as the years wear on.

I’ve now got to get Mr McGregor and Alan’s model of Peter Rabbit to Huis Ten Bosch, which is near Nagasaki in southern Japan. They fit into one large suitcase, marked “Fragile” which, together with my other luggage, is quite a handful. The journey needs 5 taxis, 2 planes, 2 trains and a bus. Today I made the first leg of the journey to London and I had a really heartening experience at Euston Station, which I wouldn’t have had down as the friendliest place in Britain. To get from the platform to the taxi rank you need to negotiate three steep flights of stairs and to my amazement, as I stood looking helpless with my luggage at the top of each one a stranger offered to help me carry them down. I thought that only happened to blondes and little old ladies, but on reflection perhaps I look more like Mr McGregor than I’m prepared to admit.

I wanted to use live rabbits in my ‘Mr McGregor’s’ garden for the Gardening World Cup, but the rules wouldn’t allow it. This was a pity because nothing could have been more authentic. Beatrix Potter kept a rabbit hutch by her back door – for the pot of course, not as pets. When I was doing my research at Hill Top the orchard there was overrun with rabbits and there were obvious signs that they’d visited the vegetable patch. The National Trust, who run Hill Top, didn’t know what to do with them, but Beatrix Potter wouldn’t have hesitated. They’d have been shot in a trice and then into the pot.

In the absence of live rabbits I’m very happy to make do with Peter Rabbit. Alan Ward has created this amazing model of Peter Rabbit eating radishes. I’ve taken this photo of Peter in my kitchen garden and I’m hoping that he’s going to look just as splendid in Mr McGregor’s vegetable patch.