Zing!

Friday 25th

At Singapore Botanic Gardens I’ve been reminded that the word Zing comes from the botanical name for the Ginger family – Zingiberaceae.  I’ve spent the past couple of afternoons trying to get my zing back in the Ginger Garden, drinking ice-cold ginger beer.

When I left England in the snow it was hard to imagine just how hot it would be out here and now that I’m here it’s impossible to remember feeling cold.  I think perhaps for the first time in my life I have understood how important trees are simply for shade, respite from the sun’s glare.

Tuesday 29th

I am just getting acclimatised now it’s nearly time to leave.  There’s so much to take in here – both in and out of the Gardens – almost overwhelming for a woman who lives in a field in Northumberland.  Today will be my last visit to the Botanic Gardens – 74 hectares landscaped around a central core of original rainforest.  I’ve been most days and still need longer to see everything.  Stunning flowers and trees, all beautifully arranged.

On Saturday I got a tour round the Herbarium from one of the researchers here.  Around 650,000 species, with space for a million.  Also an insight into the Orchid Propagation Laboratories.  More on this later…

Wednesday 30th

On the brink of my departure, much of my time in the Gardens here (the Gardens by the Bay as well as the Botanic Garden) has felt like a puzzle – as if the gardens themselves are translations of the natural world and I am trying to make translations of translations.  Singapore styles itself not so much as a Garden City than a ‘City in a Garden’ and this refraction creates a surreal quality.  Quite often I have felt as if I were in a dream, Alice in Wonderland.  Even more so when I hear of the 5 foot snow drifts back at home.

I’ll post some photos later when I’m back in more familiar apple territory.

there is garden

and there is the opposite

of garden

Travel Preparations

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Packing List

(from The Toast of the Kit-Cat Club)

Garden in the City of Cutlery

On a day when the world’s turned white and wintry, I’m sifting through my notes from the autumn trip south.  This is an abridged version of my notes on Sheffield Botanical Gardens.

A Monday morning, the end of October.  Up to now it’s been ‘I’ – today it’s ‘we’.   Across the busy road, we walk through the open gate, under the arch of milky stone, neo-classical and confident.  Everything about this invitation to enter communicates certainty, stability and security, announcing itself as Victorian and Yorkshire, with a brusque, no-nonsense pride.  The northern flank of the gatehouse is a shop selling postcards, books, pocket money toys and botanical ‘souvenirs’, many of which seem to have very little to do with actual flowers.  The southern flank is an information office, closed for half-term.

Passing quickly through, we are welcomed on the left by a strawberry tree, fat scarlet berries next to waxy cream flowers amongst sturdy evergreen leaves.  Arbutus unedo – we eat just one, as the name suggests.  The taste is nothing like a strawberry – no juicy citrus edge – plain and business-like, better than nothing but best for jam, wine or hungry birds.  It is so pretty and surprising, a treat to see it there, the first thing in the garden.

We decide to make a circle of the triangular-shaped gardens, restored to their original ‘Gardenesque’ style, and stroll anti-clockwise, beginning parallel to the road just on the other side of the railings, which used to be a high wall when the gardens were first built in 1836 and you had to pay a shilling to get in, beyond the pocket of most of the working people of Sheffield.  Along that top edge they’ve made a Four Seasons Garden, designed to provide plants of interest all the year round.  The most striking shrub has small pinky-red fruits, rather hard and patterned with dots like a cone.  It is unfamiliar, mysterious and has no helpful black label telling us its name, introducing itself and allowing us to feel as if we ‘know’ it. We’re drawn to investigate this alien plant but it resists interpretation, impossible even to know if it’s safe to eat the fruits.  We collect one that’s fallen on the ground and later when we come across one of the gardeners, all dressed in green, he tells us that it is Cornus kousa ‘Norman Haddon’.  He also says that you can eat the fruits but he’s heard they don’t taste very nice, although he’s never tried one himself.  We don’t either – not driven by hunger to risk it.

A landscaped mound planted with ornamental birches marks the far corner of the garden.  Below it there is a restored version of the original wrought iron turnstile gate, the word ‘IN’ set in the stretch of shiny black verticals.  At the end of each day a bell is still rung to let folk know the garden is closing.  Like a short, concentrated walk across the globe, we pass borders dedicated to plants from the Mediterranean, Asia and the Americas.  Most of the flowering plants are dying back now and it’s the trees that are getting all the attention.  The tame grey squirrels are busy being busy as if it were their best time of year too.  The ground is carpeted with swirls of yellow, brown and rust red – the strongest colour in the garden, despite the efforts of the gardeners with their leaf blowers and wheelbarrows.

Illuminating the layers of leaves, there are some patches of cyclamen and autumn crocus.  We are drawn to them – as if, like bees, we need to suck up their nectar to store against the winter dark.    At the southern corner, joining Thompson Road, we climb back up into the centre of the garden, past the sweet little South Lodge, set like a Wendy house by the side of the path.  All the buildings in the garden were designed to to be pleasing to the eye and add to the illusion of a ‘natural’ landscape, even though every square inch is clearly carefully managed by the curator and his crew of gardeners and the fleet of volunteers.

The heart of the garden is marked with a cast iron fountain, a heavy Victorian design, more interested in engineering than beauty.  But the energy of the cascading water is undeniable, refreshing and vigorous, and provides a focal point at the end of the Broadwalk.  Bordered by beds of herbaceous plants, this is a place to promenade, people-watch and take the air with family and friends.

A rather offputtingly named AGM Garden showcases plants that have been awarded the RHS ‘accolade for excellence’.  Sheffield houses the National Collections of Weigela, Diervilla and Sarcococca – shrubs that wouldn’t look out of place in a suburban garden.  The Marnock Garden, named after the original designer, is an area intended to inspire visiting gardeners with ‘ideas to take home’, particularly involving tender climbers and scented plants.  There’s a wooden sitooterie in the shape of an apple and a silver insect nestling among the plants.  A circular raised bed shows fragments of terracotta leaves, imprinted with words no longer legible, part of a poetry trail.

The Evolution Garden reflects the impact of the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species in 1859.  A series of signs direct the visitor to pay attention to how and when plants and animals appeared on the planet and evolved into the arrangement we’re familiar with today.  There are several examples of fossilized trees, clearly reminding people of how much longer plants have been on the earth than man.

The statue of Pan next to the Rose Garden is intriguing. This version is slightly sanitized, with human legs rather than the hairy haunches of a faun.  More Peter Pan or St Francis than satyr, he is surrounded by his friends, the birds and the mice, bronze worn shiny from much stroking by passing children of all ages.  A god of nature, Pan was earthy and sensual, unrestrained in his appetites.  Sexually predatory, he even managed to seduce the Moon, Selene.  From his name we get the word ‘panic,’ originally expressing the terror experienced in wild and lonely places.

We leave the garden by the turnstile gate.  I want to find the sign that says ‘Botanical Road’.  It sounds strangely literal, like so much in this garden, straightforwardly informative, like ‘Station Road’ or ‘School Lane’.  But in my mind it summons up images of plants and flowers, burgeoning and irrepressible, cleaning our air, stabilizing our soil, providing food for our bodies and minds, lifting our spirits with their natural beauty.  I take a photo, aware I want it to be a talisman, a signpost directing me on the course of my botanical adventures.

Mother Nature

In the various gardens I’ve been visiting, one of the things I keep coming back to is the feminine principle in nature – generative energy and mythic perspectives that appear to be inseparable from the whole business of the human impulse to garden.  Robert Pogue Harrison’s interpretation (in his wonderful book Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition) is that, far from being a curse, Eve was our first gardener and so gave us the blessing of our human responsibilities to care for each other and the land.

So I was very happy yesterday to make my first visit to see Northumberlandia – Charles Jencks’s ‘Lady of the North’ just outside Cramlington.  I’ve been following her creation with interest ever since the proposal was first announced seven years ago.  I admire Jencks’s contribution to the Maggie’s Centres around the UK, providing thoughtful and supportive care for cancer patients, and look forward to seeing the opening this year of the new one in Newcastle.  His Garden of Cosmic Speculation, near Dumfries, is a fascinating mixture of landforms and sculptures and other interventions, all playing with ideas of time and space.  Northumberlandia is very much his baby – especially his riddling, idiosyncratic signs dotted around her luxuriating body, drawing the eye in various directions.  Her ‘nipples’ point 12 miles south to the Angel of the North and 41 miles north to Lindisfarne!

Interesting to read this recently from Zen practitioner David Loy:

…you know what I think the real problem with nature is? Nature is the realm of death. There are creatures, they’re born, they die. We don’t want to be part of nature because nature reminds us that we die. And that’s the problem with women, the problem with blood, the problem with sex,…we want to deny the fact that we’re animals. We want to deny the fact that we’re born and we pass away like other animals, that we procreate like other animals. We want to have a special fate because we don’t want to be subject to mortality in the same way. And there’s a whole string there, our attitude toward women and blood and childbirth and menstruation and all that. It’s all part of this same system of denigrating women, because women seem to remind us more that we’re part of the natural world that we don’t really want to accept, and too much of our religion is an attempt to escape from nature, isn’t it? “We have a higher fate, we have souls. It doesn’t matter so much what we’re doing because we have a higher destiny anyway, don’t we?”

Hard to know what was more annoying here – the intrusiveness of the sign or the fact that the capitalisation was so random…The goddess’s face is the most striking part of her and we are directed towards looking in the mirror of her face from a distant spot across one of the constructed lakes.  I found myself speculating whether she is a cry for help.  A symbolic way of winning back the approval of Mother Nature, looking her in the eye, after treating her so badly for so many years – specifically in the open cast mining right next door and more generally on the whole planet?

At the moment the structure is still raw and the land not quite settled – it’ll be interesting to see what it looks like in a few years’ time when the grass has had a chance to grow and some wild flowers have made their home there.  Like the Angel of the North, I hope it will find a place in the local people’s hearts and minds and do its magic there.

back to the garden

As the year opens I intend to look back a little at the gardens I visited last autumn and share some more of their delights.  One of the things I’ve been doing this past week is reviewing all the writing I’ve done so far and, apart from keeping on top of all the paper I seem to have accumulated, listening out for themes I want to explore further and absences I might need to address, trying to get a sense of the lie of the land: a writer’s and a gardener’s winter activities.

Padua, the oldest Botanic Garden in the world still on its on its original site, was a revelation.  From my research before I went I knew I’d like it but didn’t realise quite how much I would love it. Perhaps I felt my Italian roots from my father’s side of the family stir, grateful of a little attention.  It was my ‘first’ garden abroad and seemed to be a place all about origins.  Historically, the hortus conclusus, or enclosed garden, was seen as an image of the Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary.

hortus inconclusus

Held in a mother’s arms

happier than I’ve been before

or since – such lightness,

forgetting what it is

to suffer.

Time disappears

in spores of sky, medicine

unasked-for, blue eyes

seeing and asking

for nothing.  Photosynthesis –

what is given

given back:

intimacy and charm,

chlorophyll,

what’s possible.  My darling garden,

hold our fragile heart.

You can watch a slideshow of some of the photos I took in the garden at Padua, sifted from over a thousand, here.

A Hinge for the New Year…

Flower Renga

New year’s day
lilies flush
with unspent pollen

risking themselves, the first
snowdrops, a hellebore

how to describe
the scent of hyacinths
sweet, intense, alive

an infusion of rosebuds
in a glass pot

picking out the stars
by name like flowers
in a night garden

rhododendrons bud
like birthday candles

along Oystershell Lane
brown buddleia rise
above fences painted green

all buckle and tilt
the empty garden

each bud on my magnolia
wrapped
in a pair of miniature wings

iris reticulata
the familiar strange

blue sky and sunlight
birch tree glittering
a fog in my head

poems about my mother
the first flowers

as if I’ve swallowed the city
concrete and metal
cherry, forsythia

so many flowers
furred, miaowing

I sow self-heal
Prunella vulgaris
heart-weed

puffs of smoke
are cypress pollen

her clever way
with daisies
pressed in clay

the room’s a garden
my thousand-petalled heart

six hours of gardening
my winter-stiff body
learning to bend

amaranthus in the hothouse
its crimson dreadlocks

above the birches
a buzzard’s wings
filtered sunlight

planting out mimulus
‘fear of unknown things’

buds plumping
on leafless branches
the foxglove tree

five red freckles
inside the yellow cup (Cowslip)

the garden gathers us in
like children
wanting their mother

too many words
nothing to do with gardens

we walk across
to Dunstanburgh
sea pinks and kittiwakes

a garden transformed
with words and work and weather

‘Derrick Cook’
unpromising name
for such a delicate geranium

ash trees’ pinnate leaves
ripple in the sky

a bumblebee
rings the bells
of the foxglove

in the Tropical House
a lesson in adaptation

all evening
the smell of lilies
before I find them

collecting elderflowers
a gap in the rain

ivy-leaved toadflax
tangled on the wall
yellow lips, purple lips

as if I have no choice
dancing to the tree’s tune

amber? vanilla?
we press our noses
into its white petals (Encyclia abbreviata)

Hylde-moer, Hylde-moer
what is she calling for?

half-Rothko, half O’Keefe
I paint the light
of the flower in oil

Ward 9 – flowers forbidden
he takes his Nanna plastic

five hours
in the meditation garden
a cat’s cradle

gathering mullein flowers
remedy for earache

he splits a root
of meadowsweet
the smell of germolene

dong quai
Chinese angelica

orange and blue petals
in my tea cup
a pot pourri

a day of gifts
a calla lily, chocolate, Patti Smith

coming home
to a crescendo
of white gladioli

trimming the privet
housework outdoors

despite the rain
the fragrance
of sweet peas

in one envelope
a whole garden

harvest mites
berry bugs
chiggers

a sliver between clouds
to cut the grass

sixteen poets
sixteen renga lilies
in the sun

we cut a tray of violas in half
‘yellow duet’

our last day in the garden
is like a wedding –
photographs and cake

Anaphalis – ‘pearl everlasting’
its name a lie

the stink of rot
from the compost bin
clings to my hands

elderflower, lemon, sage
for an equinox cold

seeds of light
on chandeliers
of cow parsley, hogweed

the fern by her bed
an emerald flamenco

petals so gorgeous
you can’t get close enough
like silk, like skin

a glory of an afternoon
calligraphy of thorn and ash

time already up and away –
planting bulbs
I won’t be here to see

everywhere you choose to sit
there is a fountain to cool you

a grass labyrinth
loved and glittering
in russet light

one fallen frangipani
the smell of sex

counting the trunks
on Goethe’s palm
a poet’s blessing

I can’t help but love
her love of the garden

‘a beautiful tree
we sometimes forget
to admire’ (On Radio 4 – the ash)

you paint your toenails
the colour of parma violets

the haiku master
named after a banana
Musa basjoo

bravado of mistletoe
alien, unapologetic

safe in my pocket
the biggest conker
I’ve ever seen

persimmons – like people –
sweeten when they ripen

his reindeer ears
more like flowers
birds of paradise

he draws me
the circle of Ryoan-ji

flowers of glass
a bower
round their door

frost redefines
roadside ivy

a wasp’s nest
enough
for my winter garden

pine and bamboo
keepsake from the cloud gallery. (British Library)

*

Flower verses extracted from the renga journal I kept throughout 2012 – slightly rearranged to fit the requisite patterning in a different context, but pretty much as they were written.  A way of stepping into the new year – reflecting on where I’ve been already and clearing a space for where I might find myself in the months ahead.

Warm wishes to you all for 2013 – a thousand flowers!