What we can learn from British gardeners
For Canadians to understand the British passion for their gardens, we need only look as far as our own obsession with hockey.
Hockey here equals gardening there.
It was barely 200 years ago when a group of schoolboys, attending King’s-Edgehill School in Windsor, N.S., thought it was a clever idea to play the ancient stick-and-ball game of hurling on the winter ice of Long Pond, in their backyard. They laced up and used hurley sticks to move a ball around the ice. About 70 years later, a group of Canadians in Kingston, Ont., created the first rules for hockey. In 1892, Lord Stanley, then Canada’s governor general, donated the Stanley Cup to reward the best hockey team in the country and the rest is history.
British plant-hunters were sent around the world on discovery expeditions about 200 years before we played the first game of hockey. The Chelsea Physic Garden, in London, was established in 1673 for the express purpose of collecting seed and plant stock from around the globe to explore their medicinal value.
Here in the 21st century, we have some catching up to do. Based on my travels across the pond a couple of times each year, I recognize the enormous opportunities we can learn from the U.K. where gardening is concerned.
This past spring, I was in London for the grand reopening of the Garden Museum. I marvelled at the largest flower show in the world at the Chelsea Flower Show. I visited the historical Chelsea Physic Garden and I took advantage of a public tour of private gardens of the town of Richmond in southwest London. I was in heaven.
Here is what I learned:
1. Bring on the wildlife. Archbishops Park, in Lambeth, across the river Thames from Westminster, provides unique learning opportunities for young and old alike. A still pond illustrates the value of water as the habitat for a myriad of desirable wildlife. Frogs, toads, newts, dragonflies and song birds find food, shelter and breeding habitat there.
Signs explain all of this in detail. Insect hotels and mason bee habitat have been created by schoolchildren and are featured throughout the park.
Archbishops Park encourages visitors to take their time — our powers of observation are sharpened when we slow down. 2. Sit and contemplate. It is worth noting that there is more than four times the urban green space in London, per capita, than in Paris. Which is not to diss Paris — its has, after all, some of the world’s best food. And coffee. In Toronto, we have a treasure that would make any British gardener proud: the Toronto Music Garden. Located at Harbourfront Centre, on Queens Quay W., this well-thought-out garden proves how much can be achieved with very little space. I urge you to loaf there any time. For free.
3. Kids. When a tree is felled in a British park, it is often limbed for safety and then left for kids to crawl over and explore while it rots. It takes a couple of generations for a large tree to rot, so this proves to be an inexpensive, resourceful use of a product that otherwise would be considered waste.
As nature slowly returns the carbon of the wood back to the soil, we learn that there is value in sometimes just leaving a thing alone. Nature has its way of working things out.
4. Passion for plants. Generally, plants do not advertise well unless they are a blaze of colour. Usually we ignore them and in doing so take them for granted. Truth is, we are learning more every day about the value of our green, living world and redefining it as part of our urban infrastructure.
When I say that the British share the same attitude toward gardens and plants as Canadians do toward hockey, think about the excitement that would occur if two Canadian teams made it into the Stanley Cup final.
Then, imagine this: while the Chelsea Flower Show was on in late May, TV station BBC 1 featured it in a live, hour-long broadcast each night during prime time.
All of the U.K. tuned in to see the latest plant featured, to learn the garden trends demonstrated and — of course! — to see their favourite garden celebrities expound on the best plants for British gardens. It was a week of Stanley Cup playoff gardening. Mark Cullen is an expert gardener, Order of Canada recipient, author and broadcaster. Get his free monthly newsletter at markcullen.com. Look for his new bestseller, The New Canadian Garden, published by Dundurn Press. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCullen4 and Facebook.