 I was warned, but didn’t need to be. ‘Don’t even think about taking out your phone when you’re outdoors in London’. I was very aware of that warning on a recent visit- but even so, it’s easy to forget it. Hundreds of phones are snatched every day. The exact numbers aren’t known, as few of the thefts are reported to the police. What’s the point, when the police don’t give a damn and the chances of them recovering your phone, let alone catching the culprits are tiny. The thefts are usually carried out in the open air by thieves wearing balaclavas on scooters and they are gone in the flash of an eye. But many thefts are carried out by pickpockets on the street or in shops and cafes. This plague ruins many a holiday and deters people from visiting or living in London, me included.
The contrast with Japan couldn’t be more stark. There, people feel so certain that their phone will never be stolen that they will leave it on a table to reserve a seat in a café and then go to the counter to order, confident that their place and the phone will be there when they return. The photo above was taken in a Starbucks in Fukuoka, where a woman marched in, put her phone on the table and then disappeared to get her order. The next day I saw a woman leave her handbag on a table and then go round the corner, out of site, to join the queue for a coffee. These people aren’t stupid or reckless- they know with certainty that their property is not at any risk of being stolen. In London the number of phone thefts has quadrupled in the last four years and the culprits are organised gangs. In a recent case, involving 40,000 stolen phones, where the police did make arrests, the thieves were from Bulgaria, the organisers were from Afghanistan and the phones were being shipped to China. This kind of scenario could never occur in Japan, where they keep very strict control of their borders and they have maintained their society as a homogeneous, harmonious whole. The consequences of Britain failing to do so is only too apparent.
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 Is there anything more annoying in England than arriving home to find a note from the postman which begins ‘Sorry you were out”? After which you have to travel up to 15 miles to the main Post Office, find a parking space, queue and then eventually receive, often on payment of a fee or fine, the letter which someone else has paid to be delivered to your house? In Japan they do things differently. Last Sunday I arrived at my house in Itoshima to find a note from the postman with the familiar preamble ‘Sorry you were out”. The note asked me to connect to a QR code, which I duly did, and was connected to their website. This was a little after lunchtime. The website asked me to let them know when it would be convenient for me to receive the letter. One of the options which they gave between 2pm and 4pm on that day (Sunday). I clicked that option and sure enough, 2 hours later the postman trundled up the hill on his motorbike and handed me the letter in return for a signature. In England the postal service is run for the convenience of the staff and hence the service to the customer is rubbish. In Japan the service is run for the benefit of the customer, and hence the service is really rather good.
 Jung Chang possesses the rarest of combinations, both moral and physical courage. As her magnum opus Wild Swans reveals, her parents were both fanatical communists at the start of Mao Tse-tung’s rule. Her father behaved with incredible cruelty when he forced his new teenage bride to walk hundreds of miles over mountain passes, carrying a pack-pack, whilst he made the journey by car. His reasoning was that she would not be accepted as a member of the Communist party unless she suffered. And suffer she did- her feet were covered in blisters, she collapsed from exhaustion, had a miscarriage and ended up in hospital in a coma. All this was endured because they worshipped their leader, Mao. She revealed in ‘Mao-The Unknown Story’ just how misplaced that worship was. No marching for him- when he led his troops, he was carried in a litter. The act of hypocrisy which she resented the most was the fact that after he had ordered the destruction of all gardens and deemed it a bourgeois sin to grow flowers he kept the most lavish, floribundant gardens at all his residences. But hypocrisy was the least of his faults- she discovered that he was cruel and malevolent on a scale unmatched by any other human being, including Stalin or Hitler, or even Stalin and Hitler combined. He not only allowed the ‘Great Famine’ to happen, but he actually planned it, knowing that tens of millions would die (the figure admitted by a leading communist party historian is 37.558 million). Chung estimated that he had caused the deaths of well over 70 million of his own people in peacetime, as well as inflicting terrible suffering during the cultural revolution.
In ‘Fly, Wild Swan’ she tells the story of how the research for her book on Mao was carried out and how lucky she was to be able to do the research and find out the truth during a brief period of openness in China, and how the cult of Maoism is thriving in spite of what was revealed. Now, the Chinese population is once again being indoctrinated into the cult of Maoism. And there are plenty of useful idiots in the West supporting it. Chang quotes Ken Livingstone, when he was London mayor, as saying ‘One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot-binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao Zedong era’. In fact foot-binding had been banned by the Empress Dowager Cixi in 1902, but it beggars belief that anyone should think that one beneficent act would out-weigh mass murder. As Chang describes in her book, Communist China has done everything in its power to silence her and force her to renounce her meticulous, impeccable research on Mao. It is a tribute to her wonderful courage that they have not been able to succeed. One of the Chinese government’s most egregious acts towards Chang was to prevent her visiting her dying mother in China. It is chilling to remember that only recently in this country our own Prime Minister, who considered himself the most liberal and compassionate of men, imposed a blanket ban on any person visiting their dying relative, on grounds which we now know to have been wholly specious. This was positively Chinese in its cruelty and wickedness and shows how perilously close we are to the tyranny of China.
There is an amusing contrast between Thomas Piketty and Wang Jianling. Piketty is a famous French economist and highly respected member of the Establishment, who is dedicated to the destruction of the capitalist system. Wang is a member of the communist party in China who has done more than anyone else to create wealth and capital through free enterprise in China. When I met him during my time in Oxford he was the richest man in Asia. The occasion of our meeting was a lecture given by him at the Said Business School to promote his book, The Wanda Way. The lecture hall was packed with Chinese students, who listened with rapt attention to his story of how he rose from being a soldier in the Red Army to creating a property empire, based on malls and cinema chains. Question time revealed the eagerness of the audience to learn the secrets of becoming rich. As I was, literally, the only non-Asian in the audience I was interviewed by the attendant press and TV and told them how impressed I was by what I had seen and heard. There was no doubting the keenness of the young Chinese to learn the lessons of Free Enterprise and profit by them.
The contrast with a lecture given by Thomas Piketty could not have been more striking. His talk, to an audience of more than 500, was vastly oversubscribed. Piketty’s main thesis is that capitalist society is becoming more and more unequal and that the remedy is more government intervention and higher taxes. The audience loved him and it was obvious from the questions which were asked that they subscribed to his thesis. When I collared him at the reception afterwards he doubled down on his call for higher taxes, telling me that he thought that a top rate of income tax of 75% would be sustainable. I wonder if I was the only dissenting voice that evening? It certainly felt like it. The fact that his crazy and destructive theories (which now include a ban on private jets) are treated with respect rather than derision will go some way to explain why today Europe is faring so badly , in contrast to the continued growth of the economy in China, fettered though it is now, by the increasing authoritarianism of President Xi. It’s a depressing thought indeed that Oxford students live in a bubble of unreality, unaware that with the loss of their economic freedoms go the loss of other freedoms as well, such as freedom of speech, as well as a remorseless decline in their prosperity. It seemed to me that the Chinese students were hungry for success whereas the Oxford students were complacent and, for the most part, heading for failure. When I was ten my family moved to a house on the side of a hill in the Yorkshire Pennines, which had a small kitchen garden, much like ours at Yewbarrow House. My father spent all his spare time there, growing fruit and vegetables and tending to the chickens, but none of his five children, especially me, showed the slightest interest in gardening, or in helping him. It wasn’t until I had children of my own that the gardening gene finally kicked in. My own children have been dragooned from a young age to collect soft fruit in our kitchen garden but until now that has been the extent of their involvement. Until now….when, gloriously, my daughter Georgina has launched a project, together with her boyfriend Alex, for a YouTube channel devoted to the garden. The project is called The Garden in Grange and will consist of a series of short videos, with lots of mini reels in between, chronicling their introduction to gardening. The first video was released to the unsuspecting public a few days ago and the response has been spectacular. They have already attracted more than a thousand subscribers to their channel and the video has had thousands of views. A brilliant start. Result- one very proud Dad, who is eagerly awaiting the next instalments.
Joseph Paxton began writing his definitive guide to the Dahlia* at a time when it was still popularly known at the Georgina (see posting-Dahlia or Georgina). He surmised that the name Georgina might have been given in honour of Lady Holland, who had been acclaimed as the first person to introduce the Dahlia into the country. There doesn’t seem to be any basis for his supposition, as her names were Elizabeth Vassall, although her best friend was the similarly named Georgiana, the (notorious) Duchess of Devonshire, and she did name one of her daughters Georgiana. Lady Holland had seen the plants in the botanical garden in Madrid in 1804 and sent them to Holland House, her estate in London. From there, they found their way to Kew Gardens, where, after they had flowered in 1805, William Hooker made illustrations of them (see above). The flowers are simple, singles, as were all Dahlias at that time. The yellow one, called Bidentifolia is described as having a mild scent, reminiscent of saffron- an unusual feature in a Dahlia, although our very own Margaret Denby Dahlia, created more than two centuries later, is also mildly scented. In 1824 Lord Holland wrote a verse for his wife: The Dahlia you brought to our Isle Your praises forever shall speak ‘Mid gardens as sweet as your smile And colour as bright as your cheek Lady Holland did much to popularise the dahlia, but Lord Holland was mistaken in believing that she was the first. That honour rests with another formidable horticulturalist- the Marchioness of Bute. The Marchioness happened to be in Madrid at the moment, in 1798, when the plant was brought from Mexico to Spain and through her friendship with the Director of the botanical garden there, arranged for some tubers to be sent to Kew Gardens. Unfortunately, the people at Kew made a hash of things and within a couple of years the plants were no more. An account of these two redoubtable Dahlia enthusiasts would not be complete without a mention of the keenest Dahlia lover of them all and the most powerful woman in the world at the time- The Empress Josephine. The Empress obtained her Dahlias from the same source as our Englishwomen- the Botanical Garden in Madrid and set about hybridising them so that soon she had more than 100 varieties, including the first doubles. It is said that she loved them so much that she wanted to keep them exclusive to her own garden and that when a Polish count bribed her Lady in Waiting and a gardener to steal 100 plants she was so angry that she ordered all her plants to be destroyed. This story must be apocryphal as she continued to grow Dahlias in her Malmaison gardens. Between them, these formidable three ladies ensured that before long the Dahlia was growing in every front garden. *A Practical Treatise on the Cultivation of The Dahlia (1838)
 A Georgina called ‘Desdemona' from the 1830’s Should the plant we now call a Dahlia in fact be known as a Georgina? This is a valid question, because the Dahlia was in fact at one time called the Georgina. The Dahlia (Georgina!) was almost completely unknown in England until after the Napoleonic wars and didn’t become well known until the 1820s. The flower was popular, but the name wasn’t. People complained that it was confused with the similarly named Dalea and that no-one knew how to pronounce it. Should it be Daw-ly-a, Da-ly-a or Dea-li-a.? It was then pointed out that in parts of Europe, particularly France and Germany the Dahlia was known as the Georgina, and that this name had been accepted by the world’s leading botanist De Candolle. And so, in 1828 it was announced by John Claudius Loudon, the author of the Encyclopaedia of Gardening, and the editor of the Gardeners’ Magazine that the Dahlia would henceforth be known as the Georgina. It was, after all, a much prettier name and one which everyone knew how to pronounce. Loudon said that he expected every young gardener to immediately adopt the new name, although he accepted that ‘those who do not own to being young’ might continue to use the old one. Two years later he noted with satisfaction that on a tour of the north of England and of Scotland the new name had generally replaced that of the Dahlia. And so it was that for the next five years the flower which had been known as the Dahlia became the Georgina. The Georgina era happened to coincide with a remarkable increase in the popularity of the flower. In the Flower Shows, of which there were hundreds across England and Scotland, the Georgina dominated the prize categories. In the 1834 Royal Horticultural Society flower show collections of Dahlias won two out of the four main prize categories. It was observed that the numbers of Georginas being grown was ‘almost incredible’. Then, suddenly, there was a volte-face in the community of botanists. It was pointed out that whilst the same plant had been given two separate names, that of the Dahlia had been registered first. The Dahlia had been named after a famous Swedish botanist called Dahl, whereas the Georgina had been named after an equally eminent botanist called Georgi. But the Dahl guy had got there first, and so the Dahlia name was reinstated, as from late 1834. The irony is that neither Dahl or Georgi had any connection with the plant and had probably never even seen it. Indeed, Dahl had died before it was introduced into Europe. The other irony is that although everyone now pronounces Dahlia the same way, as in Day-lia, we have all got it wrong as Dahl was pronounced as in Roald Dahl, a fellow Swede, so it should be pronounced Dahl- ia. But what we didn’t get wrong was to continue to love this gorgeous flower every bit as much as when it also had a gorgeous name.  An unnamed crimson Georgina from the 1830’s I’ve often been told that I must be completely mad to open my garden to the public. Surely, they say, won’t people will be critical of all those weeds? And aren’t you just inviting burglars to come and case the joint for the price of a fiver? If anyone has come to case the joint, they have either decided that we’ve nothing to steal or that someone has beaten them to it. As for the weeds, that is actually the main reason that I do open the garden, four times a year. The days we open are the only days when the garden looks even remotely respectable and decently free of weeds. In any case people don’t come to criticise. They are invariably kind and not an Open Day goes by without someone saying ‘This is the best garden I’ve seen in my entire life’ or ‘This garden is miles better than Highgrove, or Gresgarth Hall’. Of course I know they are exaggerating, but by the end of the day you are positively beaming from all the compliments you get.
 The Moon Viewing Platform The other day I was walking along the side of a stream when I came upon a huge clump of self-seeded Buddleia. The aroma was overwhelming. As I couldn’t see a single butterfly on what is known as the ‘butterfly bush’ I decided to stop and wait for them to arrive. After a minute or so of just standing and observing I began to take in what was in front of me. First, I noticed that whilst there were no butterflies, the flowers of the Buddleia were covered in bees. There were several large bumble bees and some small honey bees collecting nectar. Then, looking down at the stream I saw a dragonfly skimming over the water, and looking more closely an almost translucent fish, about six inches long, but scarcely visible. The more I stood and stared the more the scene came to life. There wasn’t just one fish, but several. The gentle buzzing of the bees was enlivened by bird song. Then the butterflies arrived; first some cabbage whites, and then a pair of tortoise-shells. This led me to think of the value of staying still and observing. In Japan there’s the concept of Shinrin-Yoku, which translates as Forest Bathing. It’s not an ancient idea, but was dreamed up by Tomohide Akiyama, a director of the Japanese Forest Agency in 1982, who after carrying out some research pointed out how time spent in a forest, just contemplating, was beneficial for one’s health. Is this the only good idea a government official has ever had? I would like to extend that concept to the garden- Niwa-Yoku, or garden bathing. Without knowing it, I have been practicing Niwa-Yoku in my garden for years. The environment is perfect. We have identified 58 species of birds in the garden, so that we can be sure of hearing bird song all the year round. There is always an abundance of insect life, not least from the tens of thousands of bees in our hives. Niwa-Yoku can be practised anywhere in the garden, but it turns out that, by happenstance, we have already created the ideal spot. In the part which we call the Japanese garden, next to the Tea House, there is a platform jutting over the pool which has always been called the ‘Moon Viewing Platform’. It comes with resident ducks and an ever-changing vista. At night the moon is accompanied by the hooting of the owls.  The Vista from the Moon Viewing Platform  When I came to gardening as a complete novice I also came to gardening free from any prejudices and preconceptions. For instance I looked at a Dahlia and thought “How beautiful’, whereas if I had been properly brought up I would have grimaced and said “How vulgar”. I had no idea that Dahlias were considered to be gross, gaudy, garish and beyond the pale. This last phrase is apt because in a well brought up garden pale colours such as blue, mauve, lilac and white were acceptable, but orange and red, or, heaven forbid, orange and red together, were too, too, de trop. So it was that, in my complete innocence and oblivious of the sniggers of the cognoscenti, I put together a collection of brightly coloured Dahlias, blithely placing red against orange and yellow with purple. I was lucky in two respects. First that Christopher Lloyd, who wrote a weekly column for Country Life, expressed his admiration for Dahlias and other brightly coloured tropicals and began to puncture the prejudice against them. Secondly that the British public, perhaps following his lead, or starting a trend on their own, started to buy them and love them. Gradually Dahlias became flowers to admire, rather than to be sneered at and this trend coincided with the growth of my passion for them in all shapes, sizes and colours. Dahlias even began to be grown in the most sophisticated of gardens, although these precious creatures kept their prejudice alive by only growing the dark-leafed ‘Bishop’ varieties. I still love them in any shape or size, or leaf colour- the gaudier the better. But I have kept a bed of the white variety Bishop of Dover, quite separate from the others, so that the garden snobs can enjoy and admire them, unpolluted by their gaudy cousins.  Bed of Dahlia ‘Bishop of Dover’  Maggy in her workshop Maggy Howarth has played an important part in my gardening life and so it was with great sadness that I learnt of her death. She designed the pebble mosaics for my first show garden, The Beekeeper’s Garden at Hampton Court (video) in 2009 and in the following year, the magnificent peacock mosaic for my garden at Chelsea, The Victorian Aviary Garden. She collected the pebbles from a beach in Anglesey, with permission from its aristocratic owner and enhanced the design with pottery figures and with glass. Her obituaries in the Guardian and the Telegraph amply describe her achievements and so, apart from saying how delightful she was, I will only add a couple of personal anecdotes. The RHS show at Hampton Court was opened by Princess Alexandra, who was enthused by Maggy’s mosaics. The following year the Princess paid a visit to my garden at Chelsea and again expressed her delight at Maggy’s design and asked for her contact details. This led, I believe, to her commissioning a mosaic for her own garden, which led in turn to a commission from her cousin, the Queen. The obituaries refer to current commissions from King Charles at Balmoral and Sandringham so it is possible that she received several royal commissions. Secondly, I have always felt a little guilty and perhaps responsible for the death of her husband Boris (Guardian obituary). Boris was a folk singer, artist, stone carver, friend of Adrian Mitchell and founder of the Lancaster Street theatre. He was also a keen gardener creating, with Maggy, a hilltop farm garden at their home at Wennington, on the edge of the Bowland Valley. Maggy’s workshop was at their home and Boris was mowing the lawn one day when I was indoors with Maggy discussing our plans for the bee mosaic. Our meeting over-ran and Boris came in looking rather irritated and asking when he would get his lunch. Maggy sent him back to the garden. The following day I learnt that he had died of a heart attack that afternoon in the garden and realised with a pang of guilt that the irritation caused by his missed lunch may have been a contributing factor. Maggy’s mosaics are now installed in my garden. She cleverly designed the mosaics in sections, putting the pebbles onto concrete slabs, which fit together seamlessly, but can be easily detached and re-assembled. Once together they are indestructible. The peacock mosaic is in its third home, on a new terrace set high in the garden which looks, fittingly, towards Maggy’s hilltop home and workshop at Wennington, where her son George is carrying on her work.  Maggy cleaning the Peacock mosaic  From the Beekeeper’s Garden  Princess Alexandra in the Beekeeper’s Garden  Pottery birds for the Peacock mosaic  Detail of the Peacock mosaic  The Peacock mosaic installed on Main Avenue at the Chelsea Flower Show  The Peacock mosaic installed on Main Avenue at the Chelsea Flower Show  Detail of the Beekeeper’s Garden installed at Yewbarrow House
Does torture by bamboo, where a man is tied to the ground and bamboo grows into him, really work? You’d have thought that the total exclusion of light would stop the plant growing, and my guess is that this form of torture is more the stuff of fiction than history. But there are other forms of torture by bamboo, as everyone who has planted a clump, only to see it take over their garden, will know. The second form is the torture of trying to remove it. Bamboo is tenacious stuff, and you have to be very strong indeed to dig it out.
Our land at Itoshima was well and truly tortured by bamboo when we took it over. The bamboo was so dense that nothing else would grow. The first three months were spent digging it out, mainly by Matt’s stalwart bunch of Workaway volunteers. Then the bamboo came in useful. Chris, with his usual creative flair, used it to make a decorative fence round the vegetable garden. These four photos show how bamboo ceased to be an intruder and became our friend.
In 2000 Hilton Hotels bought the side of a mountain by the coast in Itoshima, intending to build a resort there. Unfortunately for them this was prime oyster territory and the local fishermen kicked up such a stink about the threat of pollution that the scheme foundered. My friend Minohara-San bought the 70 hectares for a song. When he heard that I was looking for land to build a house and garden he very kindly offered me a plot right on top of the mountain, and this gave rise to the idea of creating a ‘Slow Life’ village where city dwellers could come and find out about the ways of the countryside. But he had placed the land in the hands of an educational charity who wouldn’t allow any buildings, whatever the environmental credentials, so the scheme fell by the by.
 It’s never a good idea to raise people’s expectations too high, as there’s a risk that they will be disappointed. This was the worry which I had with our website for Bay Villa – the rooms were so photogenic that I thought the reality might not live up to the photos. It turns out I was wrong. The most common reaction, when people are shown a room is to saw “Wow!”. We had a soft opening four months ago, with no advance publicity, but the word has spread, and the reaction from our guests has been wonderful.
In July we’ve had tour groups from Estonia, Pennsylvania and Sweden, as well as our usual NGS Open Day, but the month has been dominated by artists’ events organised by Alan Ward. First, the Life Models’ day and then the Artists’ Day, which is now established as an annual event. So July’s slideshow is dominated by artists, some of them in the altogether. Luckily the weather has been warm, which has been good for the flowers as well.
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