by James Alexander-Sinclair
I don't often get to go and visit gardens. This is due to a combination of inertia and the appeal of being in my own garden, rather than somebody else's.
I don't often get to go and visit gardens. This is due to a combination of inertia and the appeal of being in my own garden, rather than somebody else's. I haven't been to Wisley for years and have only visited Kew about three times in my life. Occasionally I get to go and visit some village gardens but sadly, I don't get out much.
Occasionally, however, the opportunity arises. The other day I got the chance to spend a couple of hours pootling around the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. I was there to give a lecture to the stalwart folk who run Scotland's Gardens Scheme (the Scots’ equivalent of the Yellow Book) and had time to kill before catching an aeroplane home again.
Some might think that botanic gardens are a bit sterile and lack the intimacy and homeliness of a 'proper' garden, but that's the point, really. It's wonderful to see a fabulous tree or shrub and know that somewhere very close will be a neatly engraved label giving more information than you will ever need. Not just the plant name but also, hidden among a string of numbers and letters, the year of introduction, origin, expedition, collector's name etc. Botanic gardens are places not only to indulge one's inner plant nerd, but also to make lists of plants you covet.
I was particularly excited by the glasshouses at Edinburgh. I’m not much good at exotica so it was fabulous to be surrounded by lots of plants of which I’d never heard and which I’m unlikely to ever grow - unless I’m swept away by a desire to emigrate to the rainforest in my latter years. I saw vast elephantine bananas, slightly creepy cycads, cavorting ferns, tall cacti, bombastic bamboos and exotic orchids.
It was a great afternoon and the sun was shining, too — a bit of a result on the east coast of Scotland. The only thing that would have made it completely perfect would have been the company of one of the great plant know-alls, Roy Lancaster or Nigel Colborn.
I must get to more gardens.
See more comments...
