The curse of agricultural sprays

It’s all in the news: the ugly face of pesticides and herbicides. At last, farmers are being asked to watch where they spray all that stuff they say they need to make their crops grow. Maybe they do – some of it anyway – but not over all of us, please.

Last week a brave and determined young woman convinced the courts that the excess spray from a neighbouring farm has seriously damaged her health. It should be quite possible before spraying for farmers to give at least 24 (or preferably 48) hours notice that they are about to spray their crops in ones vicinity. At the moment, inconsiderate farmers are spraying next to homes, gardens, schools, playgrounds and parks without any notice.

The droplets are carried in the air and inhaled by all and sundry in the vicinity. Not to mention what it does to our gardens and wild life: it kills stuff off. Fortunately there are farmers who do care about their neighbours and wild life in general. They've reduced intensive farming methods and take care with their spraying whilst those who are organic, only spray with vegetable based products.

And many farmers who wish to increase wildlife on their land (possibly, in part, because they realise the un-sung benefit of it) have re-laid and maintain their mixed hedges. These allow wildlife to move from area to area and forage in safety. Other ‘wild life corridors’ are the uncultivated strips of land alongside field boundaries. Such bio-diverse habitats as these allow insects, birds and small mammals to thrive.

Farmers have been helped to encourage wildlife (whilst reducing food mountains) with ‘set- aside’. This was a EU policy that paid landowners to leave some fields fallow which allowed wild life to flourish on it. Unfortunately, the policy of set-aside has now come to an end and, with it, large areas of wildlife’s little larders and safe accommodation.

So it’s down to us gardeners as never before. Many of us already feed the birds in an effort to keep up their numbers whilst having the pleasure of watching them. And we fill our gardens with plants rich in seeds and berries, nuts and fruit.

But it’s the ‘wild’ side of gardening we need to embrace. Forget neat, embrace natural. Not so easy on a small plot, I grant, but even a tiny corner with a clump of nettles and brambles and the odd rotting log will do wonders for the wild life population. And benefit you too.

Many of our most beautiful butterflies need nettles to breed and ‘weeds’ such as comfrey encourage the bees. Finches will welcome the seeds left on the spent heads of perennials whilst larger birds appreciate fallen nuts and ivy leaves that harbour insects. Small mammals, like dormice, will welcome the blackberries that fruit on wild brambles and hedgehogs will be thankful for a cosy home under a blanket of leaves or a pile of old logs.

And if you want to spray your garden with a good natural feed then those clumps of nettles and leafy comfrey plants will come in handy. The leaves of both are compost activators: add them to your heaps and your compost will rot down much faster. Add the leaves of either to a large water butt and, a few months later, you’ll have the most nutrient rich liquid feed or spray that your plants could ask for. Now that’s what I call a friendly spray.

The Colour of Autumn

When at last we get a really cold snap of weather the trees get the message and turn their brilliant autumn colours. In England we don’t get those wonderful vibrant reds of the American New England natives but the many different greens of our native trees do take on orange, ochre and lime, yellows, rusts and browns, which give a beautiful, toning tapestry look to the landscape.

In gardens, sumach trees show us just how wonderful those foreign reds can be, and the odd red leaf oak looks stunning; the leaves of our garden cherries only a soft and pale imitation. The first foreigner to turn in my garden is the Amalanchier, which goes from green to mass of pinky red. The beautifully textured leaves of the Cornus kousa Chinensis turn a deep rich claret, those of the Malus a bright, light yellow.

Two of our best native trees for autumn colour are the hornbeam and beech which turn a rich copper, the hornbeam holding onto to its curling, brown paper rustling leaves throughout the winter. The leaves of our large weeping copper beach turn, surprisingly, from copper to almost green before - with the hardest frost – they turn steadily darkest orange to pale tangerine.

The grass beneath gradually becomes a rust-coloured carpet that parts satisfyingly as we walk through it. When the leaves have all fallen we will rake them up and use them as a mulch, piling them in situ in corners of the garden where no wind will send them skittering away. There they will stay until next spring, a thick warm blanket, protecting the bulbs, suppressing the weeds.

The oak tree is the last to turn, the leaves holding stubbornly on until its every neighbour is nearly denuded. Then, by Christmas, the wind will have taken these and sent them all over the garden to settle themselves like blankets under hedges and gates. Or we will find them, damp or dry, piled in between pots and plants.

Then, before we have had time to track them down and consign them to the compost bin, sneaky snow or ice will cover them, making a treacherous surface for the unwary who venture out without wellies.

Some people say that this is their favourite time of year, the air crisp, the colours so beautiful. But for me, Spring must be the best time with its promise of things to come. Although I must admit that the landscape now is mellow - the hedges trimmed, fields ploughed, verges cut - everything ready for a winter rest.

Out walking with Freddie today – himself the foxy colour of fallen leaves – this world seems still and quiet. A rabbit – wary and waiting – goes almost unnoticed against the bare brown earth until, suddenly, snow white tail up, it makes a dash for the hedge and home. Freddie sees it too late. A motionless pheasant - the iridescent emerald and pillar box red of its head surprisingly camouflaged in the landscape – thinks we are getting too near and suddenly scurries across the field to the safety of the wood edge.

The light is beginning to fade: tonight is All Hallows Eve when in days gone by bonfires were lit to the dying sun. Superstitions and ghosts, apples and nuts, games and wine were intertwined, all part of this night. It marks the end of the colourful season of autumn: winter’s ahead.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

An American's Passion for British Art

I did wonder what British art would be on show in the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts: I mean, there's an awful lot of it to choose from so where would they start and where would it end. As it happens the choice was made long ago when the American collector and philanthropist, Paul Mellon (1907-1999), started collecting British paintings he liked.

There were a few things that got him going: his father was already a great collector, his mother was English, he loved horses, he started collecting before many of the artist's works became unaffordable but he had pots of money if he took a fancy to something that was.

So here it was, a really diverse collection of paintings but with a bias towards subjects and artists Mellon particularly admired. For example, being horse mad, sporting art formed a large part of Mellon's collection. The exhibition starts with some of George Stubbs' (1724-1806) superb paintings of horses.

The horse is always the star in his paintings and the background very sparse but in the same room there is also a wonderful painting of the first zebra ever seen in Britain with a very busy background: it was sent over from the Cape of Good Hope in 1763. The zebra is quite beautifully executed but quite incongruously it stands in an English wood!

I liked the painting of Mellon atop his horse, Dublin, which is not hanging in the exhibition but outside of it in the Fine Rooms: it does have a setting which literally gives us a background to the subject whereas Stubbs' paintings don't. Mellon obviously loved the countryside and collected landscape paintings too and in the exhibition there are finished works and sketches that chart the change in British landscape painting.

We Brits started by copying the idealized painting style of French seventeenth century artists - Claude Lorraine and Nicolas Poussin – and we copied them too in our landscapes. John Robert Cozens' 'The Lake Albano and Castel Gondolfo' 1779, is such a painting – the subject in the foreground surrounded by trees with hills, ruins, a lit sky and a view in the background – the idealized sort of landscape certain to appeal to those doing the Grand Tour.

Mellon's collection exhibits a slow but steady progression in landscape painting, starting with Thomas Gainsbrough and Robert Wilson through to Turner and Constable all of whom also show the influence that Dutch paintings had on their style. This is followed by a landscape studies section: the sketches that these same artists did in the landscape in order to paint their watercolours later.

One of the most amazing things about these is their timelessness: a pencil sketch of a tree by Wilson, some more trees in watercolour and pencil by Cozens, rocks and vegetation by the river by Turner. It would be easy to believe that these were only drawn yesterday, the simplicity of them is so unexpected.

I liked the section on Topography and the Picturesque with the literal depictions of buildings and views, too. My favourite here was a small painting by Francis Towne, 'Ambleside', 1786. It's a small landscape view done in watercolour with pen and brown and grey ink, but it's styalized and simple, so much so that it could be mistaken for a late 20th century work.

The exhibition also covers some paintings done in Italy (with a lovely one by Richard Parkes Bonnington, 1802-1828, of the perfect skies and reflective waters of Venice) and other Europen scenes but it is to views of England that Mellon comes back to collecting.

William Blake was one of those amazingly all round talented individuals - artist, engraver, writer, printer – and Mellon particularly liked his work and began collecting it before it was fashionable. He also collected a few 19th century works by less famous artists of family groups, the style of which we know well with Mr and Mrs Rich and their family set in a landscape to reflect their social importance.

It was a really interesting collection. But sad that so many British paintings are no longer here although, as Mellon donated his collection to Yale, it does mean that it can be seen as a collection, viewed by many including those of us lucky enough to see it in London. Perhaps we need more collectors who have An American Passion for British Art.

Cote d'Azur

Nice is a lovely place to visit at this time of year. Last week, a chance to visit the South of France was transformed at short notice by Best Beloved and me into a week of holiday: this meant I had to do rapid research to make sure I made the most of all the art on offer.

It really bugs me to find out I visited someplace and missed the most interesting garden, museum or view to be found there: we were staying near Nice and the surrounding area is simply stuffed with great things to see.

The Cote d'Azur was – and still is - such a popular area for artists and in Nice is a museum dedicated to Matisse and another to Chagall. But there's no need struggle with city traffic when in the charming medieval hilltop village of St Paul de Vence, only half an hour away by car, there is a museum of modern art and contemporary works: Fondation Maeght.

At the moment there's a Spanish exhibition on there with an enormous collection of Miro's works – all the famous pieces - but there are also paintings by Bonnard and Leger – as well as Matisse and Chagall – including wonderfully leggy sculptures by Giacometti and ceramic works by Braque.

The setting of the building lends itself to all the sculptures that are on display outside: courtyards and lawns, pools and pine clad hillsides all form a perfect background for some pretty wacky or positively wonderful forms. Miro was keen on mobiles and these and his disconnected surreal works seemed ideally suited to outdoors: wind, branches, leaves, air - the asymmetricality of nature.

Henri Matisse first visited the Cote d'Azur in 1916 and, fascinated by the light, continued to visit it until he eventually settled in Vence. It's fun to search out his works here: in a famous hotel restaurant at St Paul can be found sketches of his as well as those by other penniless artists who visited -Picasso, Leger, Braque, Dufy. An exciting treasure chest to come across.

In the Chapelle de Rosaire – a Dominican convent - just north of Vence, Matisse decorated the vault: the tiled walls have simple black line paintings but two walls have stunning stained glass windows. The light from these is wonderful – sunlight coming through the blue glass glows, the yellow is frosted and diffuses the light – and the whole design is exceptional.

Marc Chagall – born in 1887 of Russian-Jewish descent – fled Russia and lived in Paris before moving to America in 1941. But in 1949 he returned to France and settled in Provence where he began to work in stained glass – more of this another time – and ceramics.

In the former 11-17c cathedral (now the church of Sainte Anne) in Vence he designed a superb mural mosaic, 'Moses saved from the Nile', in the Baptistery. The sunshine, colours and elements of nature depicted in the composition were meant to evoke the joy of baptism. I thought that the space and simplicity – naivety - of it was mirrored in his painting 'La vie', seen in the Foundation.

The area still appeals to artists, not only because they are inspired by such as Cezanne and Matisse but because the light is so very different from anywhere else. Further on from Vence yet another hilltop village, Tourettes de Loup, has been transformed into a a place for artists and craftsmen to live and work.

Up narrow, steep and winding streets, in cavernous spaces through small doors you can see weavers, potters, jewellry makers and painters at work in their small ataliers. The old stone walls and steps, ancient wooden doors and shutters, window boxes overflowing with geraniums and pots with sedums all supply a ready made composition for the artistic.

Away from the hilltop towns there are pink painted villas, green shuttered windows and terraces shaded by lush green climbers: Cannes cum California. Passing open topped sports cars racing along the corniche makes me think of the roaring twenties and thirties and high society life on the coast then: I'm inspired to read Scott Fitzgerald's novel, Tender is the Night, again when I get home. Those were the days my friends, and this is the place.

Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Books: anything on Matisse & Chagall.
A Year in Provence (see blog archive, 9 July 2007)

Highgrove: organic is beautiful

When I heard that I could visit the garden at Highgrove, the country home of His Royal Highness, Prince Charles, I was over the moon. Demand is so high that the waiting list can be up to five years and only one visit per person is allowed, so for me to get 'in' was fantastic.

The garden is a delight: Charles planned it to be not only an organic landscape but a beautiful one too and he's achieved his goal spectacularly. I walked around it with a smile as wide as a frog: from a design point of view vistas radiating from the house are achieved with paths and clipped hedges whilst wild natural areas (woods and wild flower meadows) juxtapose well with more formal planting.

The walled kitchen garden combines beauty and practicality: old varieties of apple tree are pleached or espaliered whilst other fruits are fan trained on the high brick walls. The geometric planting beds have neat rows of vegetables enclosed by low clipped box hedging – a natural form of pest control.

Scented perennials, flowering shrubs and old fashioned roses spill over the gravel paths, a good foil for the uniformity of the vegetables. Everything is grown organically using compost and natural liquid manures and with no need for sprays: as good an advert for this method of growing as anyone could find.

Throughout the park there are new structures – a dovecote, beef shed, rustic oak temples, brick paths, dry stone walls – that are all designed with the vernacular in mind. The quality of these is quite obvious and the concept perfectly in keeping with the whole ethos.

One fun aspect of walking around it – which one can only do under the guidance of a knowledgeable volunteer - is picking up the clues to inspiration. A laburnum walk is pure Rosemary Verey (Barnsley House), a pair of wrought iron gates leading into a yew hedged garden is definitely Lady Salisbury (Cranbourne Chase) and the wild flower meadow could be a Miriam Rothschild blue-print.

Sadly the giant cedar of Lebanon at the back of the house is dying if not already dead. But nothing lasts forever and although The Prince regrets the loss it's a chance to plant something else in its place for posterity.

The garden pushes every ecological button: planting suits its site and is sustainable; species and methods encourage bio-diversity; endangered native species are thriving; the estate is self-sufficient in vegetables and fruits; there is an ongoing tree planting programme for the benefit of future generations which is also a healthy carbon offset.

And most of the ideas are excellent: a reed-bed waste sewage system may not be suitable for your average Joe but re-cycling rainwater is a measure that can be copied by nearly everyone. Rainwater is free and can be used to irrigate gardens: a win-win situation if ever there was one.

Composting is also big at Highgrove and even owners of the smallest gardens can recycle kitchen vegetable waste using enclosed compost bins. These hardly ever need emptying as an organic liquid is produced that simply seeps into the soil: no sweat.

But I do hope The Prince gives up his idea to produce bio-fuel from rapeseed and other vegetable fats as this is not an efficient – or desirable - use of land. It's also a poor example to set third world countries: if they make over large tracts of arable land to produce fuel(much of it for the West), they will not be able to produce a wide choice of affordable crops for their own population.

Transport can be fuelled by electricity which is produced from timber: the production of a sustainable timber supply not only uses less land than oil seed crops but it leaves arable land free for food crop production. There is often a backlash to alternative methods: think again, Charlie.

But, apart from this one small point, the garden at Highgrove and the message Prince Charles conveys with his ideas and his methods is exemplary. For hundreds of years landscapes were made by men of wealth and power but few did so throughout the 20th century: Prince Charles is an exception. His house and garden combine to make a most beautiful landscape – a real inspiration - certainly the highlight of my gardening year so far.

Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Book Note: HRH The Prince of Wales' book, The Garden at Highgrove (published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson), is still in print and available now in paperback. Even if you have not been to the garden it is a very attractive book with plenty of ideas to inspire....tho' better still if you have been!

This year another handsome book, The Elements Of Organic Gardening, is available. It's a practical guide to organic gardening as practiced at Highgrove and other properties owned by The Prince. All proceeds from these books – and everything sold in the shop at Highgrove – goes towards The Prince's Trust for the worthy causes it supports.

Findings by Kathleen Jamie

In a further quest for something other than a novel, our Scots groupie suggested a 'sort of book' for our July book group choice: Findings, by the award-winning Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie.

Jamie obviously loves the Scottish landscape and wildlife and this book is a series of 'essays' that investigate different themes. Whether they were essays or not was a subject for discussion: all agreed they probably were although not of the 'school essay' type. So, fond of getting it right in my head, I looked up the word in the trusty OED
essay: noun 1. a short piece of writing on a particular subject.
2. formal an attempt or effort
essayist noun 1. a person who writes essays, especially as a literary genre

On a simplistic level I thought the essays were about the landscape and nature but Jamie says Findings 'is a book about being human, conscious, implicated.' She doesn't recognise the idea of 'the outdoors' or of 'nature' because she contends that we are nature, and are not – or should not be - divorced from it.

Well, of course she's right but most readers will probably enjoy her being at one. This comes across in her writing when she feels it imperative to be part of her surroundings, to interact, to get closer, whether moving along on her bike or sitting still up close on a bank.

But whether Jamie is cycling along a lane, on an island, in a boat or by a river bank she is listening as much as watching. We hear the mewing of a buzzard, waves sucking on rocks, the wind sloughing and so the reader is given a very complete picture.

She is a curious, keen and close observer and one who loves to use her binoculars to magnify, her telescope as an eye that can sweep in close. Like a camera. And I found her 'seeing' quite detached: unemotional. Like a scientist. Perhaps that's why she can put her observations into words so clearly.

Although, now and then, we are allowed odd glimpses of Jamie's personal life and views – her husband ill, her daughter's accident, her ageing grandmother: her politics, relationship with her mother.

Jamie doesn't do God, but she has a beneficent view of the natural world and a very philosophical one at that. When her husband was seriously ill she didn't pray to God to save him but concentrated instead on the minutiae of life - cobwebs and the play of sunlight – and wondered if 'noticing', paying heed to small things, was a kind of prayer.

It takes a bit of getting used to, this Kathleen Jamie view of life: she waited for hours to see a corncrake and when she finally did, one expected her to be delighted but she merely remarks 'That's that. I do not punch the air'. However, when an unexceptional man visiting the corncrake field described the small, modest birds as 'little gods of the field' she says she felt like punching the air, obviously delighted with his appreciation of the small things upon which all of nature is reliant.

Reading the book one can understand why Jamie's a lecturer in creative writing: her descriptions of the natural world are sharp and fresh, her similes humorous and original. Corncrakes don't like bad weather and are described as 'the kind of bird who'd want to be excused games'. Brilliant.

Her ability to pare down her writing – which must be part of a poet's art – is impressive in prose and the way in which she leaves her readers to draw their own conclusions shows amazing restraint.

One of my favourite chapters was Darkness and Light, describing her visit to the Neolithic tomb of Maes Howe, Orkney. Quite apart from the wonderful descriptions of the natural landscape – sky, birds, light, wind – she also explains how five thousand years ago the Stone Age builders were so skilled they lined-up a narrow passage so that on a few mid-winter days, at solstice, a beam of sunlight fell directly along that passage and illuminated the tomb. In those days darkness – black - was not associated with death as it is now. She wishes it was still so.

In The Braan Salmon the descriptions of the salmon leaping and the water they are leaping about in is superb. The river Braan is not a natural salmon river: tourists watch the salmon and admire their brio as they try to get back upriver to spawn. Is it survival of the fittest, is a conundrum Jamie raises. Few know that, try as they might, the salmon will never achieve it. It is impossible for them to clear the falls. The fittest fish die in the attempt and those that survive are those that give up and spawn where they can.

Jamie also likes to introduce us to a wider vocabularly: there are the Scottish words, of course, which pepper the text but never exclude the reader but there were also a few words that were new to me. Which perhaps indicates her love of finding out, pushing boundaries: knowing.

Findings was thoroughly enjoyed by the whole book group: 'beautifully presented book', 'an easy read', 'a gem', 'worth re-reading', were some general remarks. More specifically it was described as: informative, clever, with a wonderful sense of place. And every one understood when one groupie remarked that she had been 'transported by the descriptions'.

So, "Beam me up, Scottie", this sort of book is a real find.

Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Kirstenbosch - Botanical Excellence

When the weather is wet and gloomy here and I can't out into the garden my thoughts immediately turn to South Africa, sunshine and the glorious landscape. One place I always visit there is Kirstenbosch, the country's premier botanical garden.

When Cecil Rhodes died in 1902 he left his farm - part of his Groot Schuur estate - to the nation. In 1913 the site became the first South African botanical garden devoted to indigenous plants: set on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain, the garden is in an incomparable position and is open an impressive 375 days a year.

Locals tend to use the garden as a park either for hiking up the eastern face of the mountain or for outdoor summer concerts and picnics. But all visitors enjoy the art exhibited by local artists and the sculptures in the garden and I believe bird-watching is quite a popular pastime.

Because of the wealth of the vegetation birds are everywhere in the gardens: guinea fowl and geese are always there and I've seen sugarbirds and sunbirds, bulbuls and even kestrels and kites. To find out from a real bird expert that's been to Kirstenbosch visit www.charliesbirdblog.com

But it's the planting that is the real star: there are 89 acres under cultivation and plants are grouped together according to type, all of them indigenous. This is not the norm for many botanical gardens, some of which choose to grow unusual plants from different countries and continents. So the ethos of Kirstenbosch - indigenous sustainable planting - was far ahead of its time.

Water from natural mountain springs feed the garden, several of which meet in the first area to be cleared: a small pond was built there and the surroundings were planted with, among other things, tree ferns and a collection of yellowwood trees.

One of the Western Cape's most famous group of plants are the native fine bush - fynbos - which are hard, small leaved shrubs that can withstand wind and even fire and these feature widely in the gardens.

Other species are grown according to habitat: by the main pond cycads grow, a fossil of the plant world; succulents that prosper in the Karoo are in the rockery. The medicinal garden has herbs and healing plants used throughout the Cape; a braille trail is planted with fragrant plants and the upper slopes show off the country's national flowers, proteas.

If you visit the website http://www.sanbi.org you can find out about all the species grown there and see the wonderful scenery for yourself. Although the website pictures beautiful scenes it is a fact that many indigenous plants are not showy - except the short lived carpets of one species - so don't expect to see the colourful, overflowing perennial and annual borders of western Europe at Kirstenbosch.

But what you will see are the individual species that make up a large proportion of our herbaceous beds: these are such a large part of our gardening heritage now that we quite overlook that so many come from South Africa.

Gladioli, asters, ericas and many members of the lily family hail from South Africa: red-hot poker, agapanthus, freesias, anemone blanda, pelargoniums, amaryllis and many, many more are all plants we associate with European or American gardens yet this flora is indigenous to the Cape.

In the West we are being introduced to those plants that have for centuries been valued and used by South Africans as herbal remedies and infusions. The most famous is probably a native fynbos, rooibos: redbush tea is caffeine free and has various medicianl benefits. Another is hoodia, a native plant that is now grown commercially as a drug.

So perhaps this is an example where we can learn from South Africa. From its inception Kirstenbosch has championed sustainable planting, been involved in research that develops beneficial products and many children regularly benefit from the educational programmes there: botanical excellence.

Lucy
http://lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

PS To see a photo of Rhodes farm circa 1900 visit www.alittlebluejacket.com, on The Story page scroll down to Excerpts and find it there.

Book Note: a small niche-market publishing company in Cape Town - Fernwood Press - produces some beautiful reference books on southern Africa's culture and natural history. There are wonderfully illustrated books about landscape and ecology (including, surprise, one entitled Kirstenbosch), the animal world, African art and artists and various memoirs.

Mailships of the Union-Castle Line is one of their publications that I should like to read because my family sailed regularly between Durban and Cape Town -and sometimes to England - on Union-Castle ships.

Visit http://www.fernwoodpress.co.za to find out about their other publications.

Lavender Blue

As cyclists on the Le Tour de France whizzed along Kent roads this week-end they by-passed a landscape feature more often recognized in Provence than Kent: fields of lavender in bloom.

The Romans originally brought lavender from the Mediterranean to Britain: it was prized for its medicinal qualities and, as it contains camphor, was used as an insect repellent. The name lavender comes from the latin, lavare, to wash, as it was used in laundry processes. For hundreds of years thereafter it was planted in monastery gardens and by the 16th century was found in most private gardens too.

By this time dried lavender was valued for many uses: as well its antiseptic qualities it was scattered on floors, cupboards and beds to deter vermin, used to purify the air, in washing and as a water to scent linen and clothes. When food was not always fresh, and spices were expensive, it was also used to flavour food and as a garnish for meat and fish dishes.

The historical importance of the plant is still apparent in the names of places throughout the south east of England - Lavender Hill, Lavender Court, Lavender Cottage – and those whose ancestors were laundresses (la lavandiere) still carry the family name of Lavender.

The plant requires free drainage and chalk soils provide similar growing conditions to that found in the south of France. A chalk seam runs through Kent and in the late 19th century there were thriving lavender fields in Seal, near Sevenoaks. In those days there was hardly a household without bottles of lavender water, lavender linen sachets hanging in wardrobes, lavender soap or perfume.

In the Seal lavender fields Victorian ladies in wide skirts, high necked blouses and hats picked the stalks by hand to provide these products. But, unfortunately, the lavender fields failed although the variety Seal Lavender (Lavandula x intermedia 'Seal'), which has green foliage and strong stems of pale mauve flowers, still survives.

Lavender fields in Norfolk were the most famous during the 20th century but now farmers in West Kent are producing lavender on a commercial basis again. Steam distillation is still the most widely used method of extracting the essential oils, inherited from the Arabs hundreds of years ago. However, technical improvements mean that the reliability and quality of the product has improved.

Lavender oil is still used for traditional toiletries but it is now big business as an ingredient in aromatherapy products, desirable for its calming and relaxing properties. It's also a natural antidote: yep, it's antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-depressant and anti-convulsive. In addition lavender has had a renaissance for culinary uses: cooking essences are used in breads, puddings and preserves and cold essences in ice-creams and drinks.

Driving or travelling by train to Shoreham in Kent there can be seen a wonderful purple haze across the landscape: lavender fields in bloom instantly transport the commuter to the south of France. Rows of lavender spikes create stunning mauve hummocks that run down a south facing slope right up to the sixteenth century farmhouse of Castle Farm.

You can see how beautiful these lavender fields are by visiting their website, www.hopshop.co.uk (yes, you've guessed, they grow hop bines too), and can find out about the many activities provided for visitors. This week-end they had a Lavender Festival and visitors could buy lavender products, try lavender flavoured foods, visit the distillery and take a tour of the lavender fields.

Art courses at the farm tempt painters to try and create the quintessential Provence landscape, but lavender bushes and lavender scents are as English as English can be. If you don't believe me, on yer bike.

Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
lucy.ann.white@hotmail.co.uk


Book Note: long before Peter Mayle's book A Year in Provence (1990) was written there languished on my mother's bookshelves a slim purple covered book entitled Perfume from Province, by Lady Winifred Fortescue (1935). Finding it one day, I read the delightful record of the renovation of her small stone house near Grasse, surrounded by olive groves and lavender bushes, in which she gave a warm account of her experiences with the charming, if sometimes trying, local craftsmen.

The whole tenor was a more gentle – less scathing – version of Mayle's later book on the same subject, in the same area of Provence. However, a small consolation: Perfume from Province was republished after the roaring success of Mayle's book and it too - belatedly - became a best seller.

Flooding: the little boy and the dyke

The British talk about weather a lot: weather affects everyone and its very changeability gives us constant material for small talk. And, unlike politics, it’s a safe subject that nearly everyone can agree – and moan - about.

I have been asked why, as a landscape architect, I describe myself as a garden designer on this website. Well, many landscape architects like myself do design gardens too, but mostly it's because I find that a great number of people confuse 'landscape architect' with 'landscape contractor'. The former designs outdoor spaces; the latter physically implements such designs.

So excuse me now if I put on my professional hat and have a mildly political rant about the interaction between landscape design and the weather. Generally Britain has a mild climate and we can usually take the seasonal highs or low in our stride. But the very occasional whirlwind, earthquake, snowstorm or hurricane take us very unawares and find us totally unprepared.

In April this year we had weather that was better than is usual for June; in June we had not only April showers but some areas of England had appalling spring floods. For most of us it's been annoying but for some homeowners it's been disastrous.

However, there have always been floods and the fact that these seem more frequent and excessive is to some extent down to changes in planning policies, farming practice and lack of sustainable design.

Government policy has encouraged out-of-town shopping complexes with acres of non-porous parking surfaces; town and parish councils have not objected to housing with hard outdoor surfaces in place of free-draining ones. As a result the water goes straight into the drains and the rivers: when these rivers break their banks where does the water go.

For many years now district councils have given permission for developers to build on flood plains and sports grounds and landowners have drained water meadows. Historically these would have coped with most flood threats as large open areas of grass and gravel allow the water to drain away slowly.

Admittedly, recent floods are due to unusual rainfall but the traditional methods of controlling flooding could possibly have minimized the present damage in some areas.

It takes a disaster or two before policies and practices change and the current pre-occupation with global warming may be just the thing to get the policy makers and planners to pull their fingers out.

But it's not all down to the big boys: everywhere one can see the green grass of home covered with asphalt, paving blocks and stones (those landscape contractors again). This all adds to water run-off and the risk of flood. So part of the solution is in everyone's hands.

It was only a little boy that stuck his finger in the dyke and saved the land from flooding.

Lucy
http://www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com
www.alittlebluejacket.com

Book Note: weather is often used as a device in fiction. Many novelists – Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy for example - used descriptions of weather to impart a mood or sense of foreboding to great effect.
If we work indoors we tend to think of the weather as something that's going on 'outside' and, as we communicate with the wider world from the comfort of our computer chair, we sometimes forget that before the days of the car or the aeroplane the weather impinged on people's lives to a greater extent.
Perhaps this is why 'weather' is so often alluded to in historical novels: is it used less in modern novels?