NOT SO BRITISH AFTER ALL...
The nation’s favourites which are actually foreign!
Just as traditional English tea (made with tea from Asia, sugar from Brazil, and milk from Dutch cows) is a conglomeration of imports, so many of our so-called British garden plants are from overseas. Quintessential English cottage garden favourites, such as peonies and hollyhocks, are in fact exotics.
the wisteria that falls over our houses in late spring originally came from Asia; as did the apples that go into our crumbles in the autumn. the sunflowers that our children strain their necks to grin up at in late summer hail from the Americas; as do the dahlias that bloom alongside them.
Once plants settle here, we no longer think of them as foreigners. Perhaps what makes them seem ‘British’ to us is the setting in which we grow them. In its native France, lavender grows wild in the high stony hills of Provence, but we plant it in neat clipped rows that border paths. And in China, wild roses grow into colossal shrubs that can scale trees, but our British garden style confines them to neat mounds in the border.
today our country is famous for its gardening, and tourists flock to stroll the iconic landscape gardens of Capability Brown, and the walled gardens of sissinghurst Castle, with its cottage garden and rose borders. But funnily enough these styles are influenced by foreign gardens.
Vita sackville-West, the creator of what has been called the most English of English gardens: sissinghurst, spent time in Iran, which is where the art of gardenmaking first began around 4,000BC. It is likely she borrowed her quadrant lay-out from Islamic garden style. And our classic English landscapes were inspired by Italian Renaissance gardens.
Garden-making arrived in the uK with the Romans; then in the Middle Ages, monastic gardens flourished here. In the 18th century, the English landscape garden was born; and in the 1870s the Victorians began to make stylised versions of the centuries-old working class cottage garden, adding new plants that had arrived from overseas. those that tolerated the British climate endured, and over time became the adopted favourites that today we couldn’t imagine gardening without.
The Gulf Stream
We are able to grow a fairly diverse range of plants in the uK thanks to the Gulf stream, which prevents our winters being severe. In parts of the country particularly warmed by the Gulf stream, such as Cornwall and western scotland, it is possible to grow tender plants, such as tree ferns and Echium pininana.
But sometimes our climate being colder or wetter than the native climes of our adopted foreign plants works to our
“Garden-making began 4000BC”
advantage, allowing us to grow what would be giants on their home turf in our gardens. For instance our beloved magnolia trees - a key feature of the British spring garden - may only reach one third of the size they manage in their native China.
It seems that the so-called ‘English’ garden is in reality an international garden. Our roses may be Chinese, our crocosmia South african, and our poppies Iranian, but our gardens just wouldn’t be British without them.