Stateside inspiration – EDP Newspaper June 21st 2008
Posted on | June 21, 2008 | No Comments
The Exotic Garden is alive and well and just about ready for the new 2008 season with its first open day tomorrow. It’s been a bit of a slog this year getting the garden ready as I have had six weeks away from this fair island.
Firstly, in late February I had the privilege of leading a tour around the Caribbean with Matt Biggs of Gardeners’ Question Time, where we took 94 enthusiastic Gardeners’ World magazine readers around 11 islands.
We had the pleasure of looking at some magnificent gardens and jungles dripping with tropical plants – a welcome break from the chill of an English winter.
On my return I had three weeks to get as much gardening done as possible before I set off again on a month-long tour of the Pacific-rim north-western United States as part of a lecture tour promoting my latest book The Encyclopaedia of Exotic Plants for Temperate Climates (Timber Press).
Although it wasn’t a good time to be leaving the garden, I knew it was in good hands with Craig Knight and Liam Tobin ensuring not only that nothing in the poly-tunnels died while I was away, but, and more importantly, my six cats were fed and watered!
In my rush to get as much prepared in the garden before I departed, I managed to do the worst thing possible – pull a back muscle while lifting a pot! It’s one of those perennial problems with gardening and one that happens when you least expect it. Once done, you know you’ll have restricted mobility for the next few weeks – something I could have done without.
Unfortunately a 14-hour flight to Seattle didn’t help. But with a British stiff upper lip firmly in place, I did my best to smile through the agony.
I was invited over by the newlyformed Mediterranean Garden Society: Pacific Northwest Branch, who went out of their way to set me up with a rigorous daily itinerary of events and functions.
I was met by Seattle’s number one TV and radio host – Cisco Morris, the wackiest presenter I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. He whisked me off to Seattle’s port on Puget Sounds. In great pain, I went on a half hour ferry trip to Bainbridge Island where I was to stay for a few weeks with Terry Moyemont and Terri Stanley at their Mediterranean nursery ‘Mesogeo’. The weather there in mid-March was typically English, with frosty nights and chilly days that were grey and overcast. In fact, I don’t think I saw the sun for the first week, which made me feel really at home! After a week of crawling out of bed each morning, my hosts took me to a back specialist, who managed to miraculously fix the problem.
My first engagement was to be on the air with Cisco Morris for a two-hour radio show at the Puyallup Spring Fair, an event rather like the Royal Norfolk Show, but very American. The weather was cold, but in the main hall we had an extremely enthusiastic audience who were keen to know what gardening on the other side of ‘the Pond’ was like. Cisco’s delivery was fast, furious and exceedingly funny.
Over the next few weeks I gave several lectures on the delights of growing exotic plants in Norfolk to appreciative and chatty audiences. My hosts took me on a comprehensive daily itinerary of visiting nurseries, gardens and garden designers, with muchsharing and comparing of ideas, plants and methods. One of the highlights was my visit to the garden of another noted plantsman in the US Northwest, Dan Hinkly. An inveterate explorer and author, Dan has made many trips to exotic locations around the world, ferreting out new and unknown plant species. I was particularly interested in his ever-expanding collection of hardy Schefflera. But the garden that stole my heart was a beautiful paradise created by George Little and David Lewis. It was a fabulous artist’s garden, filled not only with exotica but fabulous columns, sculptures and tantalising water features to delight the eye and the mind.
As Christopher Lloyd and Fergus Garret of Great Dixter wrote: “The Garden of Little and Lewis is just the kind of original garden that really makes us enjoy our visits to America. There is only one word to describe their work: inspirational.”
I was fortunate to be ferried around many of the gardens by another revered gardener and plants person, Linda Cochran. Her garden has featured in dozens of magazines, books and garden shows over the years in the United States and Canada as well as Britain. The only setback here was that this particular spring has been the coldest for 50 years, which meant that many things had not yet shown above ground. I was absolutely fascinated though by her wonderful collection of Podophyllums.
She grows countless hardy tropical-looking plants and palms, as well as many South African plants, including an ever-expanding collection of Restios.
The most interesting nursery I found on my tour was Cistus Design, owned by Shawn Hogan, another intrepid plant hunter and writer who has travelled the world seeking out new plants to titillate North American gardens. Having never met before,I stayed with him at his beautiful arts and crafts house in Portland Oregon, surrounded by a veritable jungle of flora including some of the tallest Tetrapanax papyiferus I have ever seen. His nursery, some 10 miles outside Portland, fairly bristled with mouth-watering plants, a large number of which I had never seen before.
Several lectures later I ended up in San Francisco where I presented my final talk and book signing session in Berkley. Here, in stark contrast to the climate further north, the weather was extremely dry with California experiencing one of the worst droughts in decades.
All in all, though, it had been a fabulous tour filled with friendly and exhilarating encounters with some great ‘folks’ and ‘swell’ gardens. And then, it was back to earth with a bump. For since my return we’ve been working frantically to get the garden in shape for the summer. There’s been plenty (almost too much) rain. Now all we need is some warm, balmy weather to get everything moving.
And don’t forget, today is the longest day of the year, so make the most of the long evenings and enjoy your garden!
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