by James Alexander-Sinclair
...there's something about plants that makes people bubble and froth with excitement. This can be lost on a great deal of the population who can't understand what all the fuss is about...
One of the most important traits in any gardener's character is enthusiasm. I am sure that there are other occupations/activities that foster similar outpourings in their adherents. Football (for example), food (undoubtedly), trainspotting (perhaps) and cat wrangling (definitely) have their enthusiasts, but there's something about plants that makes people bubble and froth with excitement. This can be lost on a great deal of the population who can't understand what all the fuss is about. To those of us who are gardeners (and, unless you have got very lost somewhere in the world wide web, I include anybody reading this) it seems perfectly reasonable.
I mention this after listening to the sainted Roy Lancaster who is capable of making even the tiniest, leafless Himalayan weed sound as entrancing as drifting through a Venetian lagoon, while fireworks light the sky and nubile attendants serve rare delicacies from their navels. Roy is an outstanding writer (he just won Journalist of the Year at the 2008 Garden Media Guild Awards) but above all he is an enthusiast.
He follows in the footsteps of not only recent figures (the late Geoff Hamilton springs to mind) but of many of the great plant hunters. Have you ever grown Viburnum farreri? You should: it is about 3m high and has gloriously scented tubular white flowers in Autumn, lush Autumn colour and bright red berries. Or Gentiana farreri, a trailing evergreen delight with flowers like sky blue fanfares? These are just two of the plants that Reginald Farrer brought back from China.
He strode, tirelessly, all over the Far East sending back rhododendrons and many other plants; a lot of which, sadly, didn't make it into our gardens. Like all those stalwart fellows he endured more than his fair share of discomfort: ticks "the size of young crabs", snakes and disease. Eventually he died of, perhaps, diptheria on a rain-soaked hillside. His servant carefully packed up all his stuff, including boots, but threw away all the seeds and specimens that he had painstakingly collected.
He may not have been the world's most successful plant hunter (especially compared to his contemporaries E.H.Wilson or George Forrest) but he was an enthusiast. As evidence I quote his description of an Omphalogramma: "...the colour is superb, being really less of a violet blue than of a real sapphire, or very dark cornflower ... like the stars of blue velvet midnight."
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