LECTURE
PARADISE TRANSPLANTED Series
Organised by Dr Jennifer Gunning; sponsored by Buro Happold
HOW EXOTICIS YOUR GARDEN?
A Lecture by Anna Pavord on 21 May 1998
Anna Pavord is Gardening Correspondent of ‘The Independent’,
Associate Editor of ‘Gardening Illustrated’ and has just
completed a six-year study of the history of the tulip.
The first lecture in the series was marked by the lecturer's breadth
of knowledge, and made delightful by her engaging enthusiasm for plants,
enlivened by many well chosen and imaginative slides. She opened her
talk with an appreciative reference to the marrying of literature
and science in the Institution, which should be well exemplified by
the present series of lectures.
Having shown pictures of quintessentially ‘English’ gardens,
she explained how nearly all our favourite garden plants in them,
both flowering and shrubs, which we now think are English were brought
into this country, mainly from the sixteenth century onwards, from
virtually all over the world. They have flourished in this, their
adopted land, owing to its helpful, temperate climate. She gave lively
descriptions of the origins of these imports, including a large number
of vegetables. One of the biggest changes in the English garden was
brought about by the arrival of flowering bulbs in the second half
of the sixteenth century. Nature, she said, had “endowed this
country with a ridiculously small palette of plants, compared with,
say, Madagascar. But the compensation for this is our climate: we
have discovered, over the last five hundred years, that we can grow
plants from an extraordinarily wide range of other countries, other
habitats”.
Among the imports were Anna Pavord's particular favourites, tulips,
and we were treated to a memorably enthusiastic, informative and well
illustrated excursion to the native lands of tulips in all their remarkable
and ever changing varieties. Tulips spread over the ages from their
heartlands in Central Asia, to Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iran, Turkmenistan,
the Caucasus and Turkey, and thence westwards into the Balkans and
Mediterranean countries.
We take the effect that imported exotic plants have on our gardens
so much for granted that it is difficult to imagine life without them.
As an outstanding example, she gave a dramatic and lucid account of
the origin of the garden at Hidcote Manor and its development by Lawrence
Johnston from about 1910 into the garden we see today, run by the
National Trust. It owes most of its character to exotic plants, some
of which Johnston himself collected on excursions abroad. To conclude
her excellent talk, Anna Pavord reminded us that Hidcote “remains
as an enduring symbol of the obstinate desire of all gardeners to
grow plants that nature never intended”.
Questions ranged from the rise and fall in the popularity of particular
plants and in their fortunes due to attack by viruses to the possible
effect of the Ice Ages on the numbers of surviving species. There
was some speculation about the causes of the reversal in our own age
from the prevalence of conifers over deciduous species of trees in
prehistoric times. Lupins, once prominent in gardens, seem to have
suffered from a virus; though now recovering, they are not yet popular
and seem to prefer soils of low pH. The recently established national
collections are playing a vital part in preserving cultivars which
would otherwise disappear for ever in adverse circumstances. Railway,
and lately motorway, verges have provided places largely free of interference
along which interesting and attractive plants have been able to spread.
She deplored, however, the present misleading impression being given
in the media that ‘wild gardens’ are easy to manage, because
they are not. Based on her particular interest in tulips, she also
gave a lively account of the extraordinary causes and effects of the
early l7th century Tulipomania in the Netherlands.
John Coates
