The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Saturday
Take a bow, the left-behind heroes of horticulture
The influence of many gardening innovators is still felt today – yet you may not know their names. Here, we salute the unsung. By Tim Richardson
ot everyone can be a household name like Alan Titchmarsh. What of those gardening entrepreneurs, inventors and tastemakers whose influence has been strong but whose names may be unfamiliar? Here are a dozen unknown gardeners whose contributions are rarely celebrated.
ZHUGE LIANG INVENTOR OF THE WHEELBARROW
A great general and politician at the time of the Han Empire, Zhuge Liang (AD 181-234) addressed all sorts of issues as a logistics officer in the army. One of these was the problem of transporting supplies across rough terrain. In AD231 Zhuge Liang came up with a prototype for the wheelbarrow, in collaboration with the engineer Li Zhuan, with whom he was also improving the crossbow.
Their wheelbarrow consisted of one 1m-diameter wheel, with open platforms at each end of the wheel housing. Two more refined versions were then developed: the “wooden ox”, which was pulled along, and the “gliding horse’” which was pushed. The key to the wheelbarrow, as opposed to the handcart, is that it takes just one person to push it.
It is believed that Crusader armies first saw the wheelbarrow in the Middle East; the first depiction of one in Western culture is a stained-glass window in Chartres Cathedral dated 1220. The contraption has always attracted inventors: James Dyson kicked off his career in the 1970s with the invention of the ballbarrow.
LADY EVE BALFOUR ORGANIC GARDENER
This redoubtable lady was an early promoter of organic agriculture and horticulture who led by example. Coming from an impeccable establishment background (her uncle was prime minister AJ Balfour), her decision in 1915, aged
17, to read agriculture at University College Reading raised some eyebrows. Subsequently she farmed in Suffolk with her sister, learning the saxophone and playing in a jazz band, also writing detective novels and qualifying as a pilot. In 1939 she established an experimental farm where she conducted comparative studies in organic production, resulting in her influential book, The Living Soil (1943). This led to the formation of the Soil Association three years later, whose guidelines were adopted by the leading organic gardening associations of the Fifties. Lady Balfour almost single-handedly accelerated the concept of gardening without pesticides, an idea adopted by better-known writers of the next generation. Tuinen. Ruys’s distinctive contribution was to meld modernist architectural principles – the use of decks, paving designs and an awareness of space – with a naturalistic planting style.
Her father ran a nursery on the site and Ruys was always well aware of the value of plants in design, championing neglected species such as Phlomis russeliana (Turkish sage) and grasses as ornamental plants. She described her planting as “a wild planting in a strong design”, a sentiment which might sum up the approach of a whole generation of contemporary naturalistic designers.
Since she died in 1999, her name seems to be remembered only by the garden design cognoscenti.
NICOLA FERGUSON INFLUENTIAL AUTHOR
The title of Nicola Ferguson’s 1984 book, Right Plant, Right Place, is now a mantra among gardeners, especially those faced with difficult growing conditions. Consisting of introductory passages devoted to different soil types and situations, followed by lists of plants which might grow there, the book provides practical information of the type most gardeners want. It helps provide an answer to that most basic question: “Will it die?”. It remains impossible to find this information on the internet in such an easily comprehensible format. The book seems to anticipate the gardener’s thoughts and wishes, so perhaps it is
RICHARD HANSEN ECO-PLANTING GURU
The name of this German professor is not mentioned in the same breath as naturalistic garden stars such as Piet Oudolf and James Hitchmough, but his research and writing played a crucial role in the development of the “New Perennials” movement. He defined the concept of the “plant community” – the idea of creating a garden inspired by a snapshot of wild nature and allowing it to develop in an almost unmanaged way. He “allowed” exotic or nonnative species into his perennial mixes, a credo widely accepted today. Hansen was a professor in Germany and his principal work of 1981 was only translated into English in 1993 as Perennials and Their Garden Habitats. It is still known only by specialists but has not been superseded; designers use it as a crib sheet for reliable listings of plants for specific habitats.