TIM SMIT OF HELIGAN ON RESPECT FOR THE HARVEST
It is harvest time at Heligan, Cornwall’s ‘lost gardens’ rediscovered and brought back to life 30 years ago. Here Heligan’s founder Sir Tim Smit reflects on the seasons and the importance of harvest that, for many, has been forgotten in our modern world. Heligan’s harvest event starts on Saturday October 17 and runs until November 1.
IN modern times Harvest has lost its allure, its magic. Gone is the notion of thanksgiving, of spiritual gratitude to the plenty gathered together in celebration of the fecundity of the earth.
The global reach across time zones, date lines and hemispheres has broken seasonality and the sense of belonging to a calendar of fruitfulness.
The age of refrigeration has made us forget that once upon a time April was the dying month, the period where last year’s supplies could run out and this year’s bounty was yet to ripen.
Gone too is the respect for horticulture, that applied science as important as medicine, pharmacy or engineering, now consigned to lifestyle choice magazines and television programmes; class ridden and quaint, with “in for a dig” allotments as recreation and giant vegetables a novelty for the local paper. BUT…the dying month has gone?
As you walk around Heligan’s marvellous productive gardens and Rare Breed Park think for a moment about the supermarket food on offer and remember that the choices are focussed solely on yield and homogeneity of growth.
We don’t want anything imperfect on the vegetable shelves yet, I can give you a strawberry so good that were I to offer you a taste you would pay me a small fortune for just a punnet; an English white fleshed peach so juicy its memory will last a
‘I feel angry at the realisation ‘Heritage’ is simply a word given to crops not suitable for mass production’
whole lifetime and a radish so strong it’ll make you gasp for breath and, there are many more so-called heritage vegetables grown here that create a palette that is the shield against that dying month.
Heligan in 1991 was the only garden open to the public that was telling the whole story of a productive garden. Nowhere else had kept these monuments to an era when the big houses were like embassies, hosting all the important visitors to the area and feeding them.
The skills of advancing and retarding the seasons by growing fruit on North and South facing walls to stagger fruiting times; the choice of vegetables to each ripen as long as possible across the year. Then there were the treats, the exquisite fruits and vegetables that were treats to the taste and then there were those noble crops whose flavour was perhaps not as refined but whose keeping qualities were such that they could be stored without rotting right through to April.
Maybe not the best sweetness or nourishment but, enough. The skills to maintain this orchestra of plenty were a culture, and a science.
The annual thrill was the arrival of the seed merchant to tempt the Head Gardener with the latest developments from either “up country” or abroad and, alongside this vital craft was the battle to defeat nature by growing exotics for competition… the pineapples, the bromeliads, the orchids.
In here sat knowledge of the seasons, of engineering and the cunning of invention. The productive garden is a symbol of all that is best about the human spirit and its stage was a matter of life and death of joy and competition.
As I write these words and reflect on our production and its importance I feel angry and distressed because I sense, coming over the horizon, is going to be a new realisation that “Heritage” is simply the word given to crops not suitable for global mass production by Big agriculture.
In truth these fantastic crops are our birthright, they are vital seed banks of vegetables and fruits not dependent on fossil fuel additives, un-addicted, untampered with and stewarded and nurtured by just a few of us.
As you admire our Harvest exhibition once again think of the importance of developing these skills and habits which are needed to allow this science to carry on into the future.
Ask how we can raise the nobility and dignity of this profession to give it the status to attract a whole new generation to enter? We talk about rare breeds here, but in my view the rarest breed we protect here at Heligan is the Horticulturist and it is our dearest wish to be the launch pad for that new generation of gardeners and nurturers, inventors and perfectionists. This would for me be the best Harvest of all. I hope you agree.