Weeding the Web

RHS Chelsea 2017: Poetry Lover's Garden to inspire verse or worse

Art inspires art. Pictures have been inspired by music, sculpture by dance, poems by gardens, and at RHS Chelsea this year, there'll be an Artisan garden inspired by Samuel Coleridge's poem This Lime Tree Bower my Prison.

The Poetry Lover's Garden by Fiona Cadwallader will be one of the Artisan gardens at RHS Chelsea 2017

 

 

Today is World Poetry Day, so what better moment to mention that visitors to the show will be encouraged to lick their pencils (metaphorically, if not literally) and jot down a micro-poem inspired by Fiona Cadwallader's Poetry Lover's Garden or, indeed, any of the displays around them.

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram contributions will be encouraged with the hashtag #CFSpoet, or you'll be able to post directly onto Fiona Cadwallader Designs Facebook page. For those with a real pencil, there'll be a poem pot ready to receive on site and each day Fiona will select her Poet of the Day from all the entries.

I suspect Coleridge is almost better known for his presence in BBC Radio 4's comedy The Wordsmiths at Gorsemere - where as Cholericke he joins Lord Biro, Percy Jelley and the Wordsmiths in a delicious parody of Romanticism and the Lakeland poets - than for his poetry these days.  That, or the story of his losing the ending to Kubla Khan when interrupted by a "person from Porlock". What writer can't imagine the agony of that?

This Lime Tree Bower my Prison was written by Coleridge when he was forced to stay at home, under a lime tree, while his friends took a walk which he was unable to share, having been temporarily incapacitated by his wife pouring boiling milk on his foot.

Instead, he imagines the scenes they see, and enjoys his own situation:

Nor in this bower,                                                  

This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd       

Much that has sooth'd me. Pale beneath the blaze

Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch'd          

Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to see

The shadow of the leaf and stem above

Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree

Was richly ting'd, and a deep radiance lay

Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps

Those fronting elms, and now with blackest mass

Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue

Through the late twilight…

Fiona Cadwallader says, “I studied Coleridge’s work at university and This Lime Tree Bower My Prison made a big impression on me, as the poem echoed my own belief that everyone has an innate appreciation for nature."

She's slightly more optimistic than I am with that opinion, especially when you look at the various town planning schemes that get the go-ahead, but she adds that gardens can be heightened appreciation of nature. "So, when I was considering ideas for my first Chelsea show garden, it felt natural for me to reference the themes of this beautiful poem in the design."

Gardens and poetry do seem to have an affinity. This June the Open Squares Weekend in London will again be hosting Poets in Residence, with thirty poets available in twenty-seven gardens. They too will be encouraging contributions from the public, so now's the time to start sharpening those pencils.

Is there a better early scented shrub than winter honeysuckle?

With barely anything blooming in the garden yet (apart from bulbs) I think I can say that we've already had one of the best performers of the year. For at least a month, the winter honeysuckle has been glorious.

My first brimstone butterfly of the year, drawn in by the winter honeysuckle.

I last wrote about it, Lonicera fragrantissima, in 2014, when it had been in three years and, it seems, I was keeping it smallish and still having to bend down to smell the flowers. I bemoaned the fact that the scent didn't waft far from the bush.

Winter honeysuckle flowers remind me of witch hazel, the way they populate the branches.

Well, three years on, and six years since I worried that the honeysuckle was a mistake, what a change. I've walked down the garden every day to be engulfed in the delicious sweetness of its scent. It still grows like Topsy, now pretty much six feet high, with greater aspirations that I will have to discourage. And it's been smothered in flowers which have drawn in my first butterfly of the year - a brimstone - in warm sun, and countless bees even on dull days. Their buzzing has been a reminder of summer to come.

Lonicera fragrantissima in full bloom

It turns out to be good in the house too, filling the sitting-room with scent on days when the sun has come through, though obviously flower arrangement-wise it's a bit minimalist and the blossom drops all over the place.

So, I have to admit to a great satisfaction. Six years on, with doubts along the way, it now does exactly what I hoped it would, even drawing the eye down the garden to the cloud of white blossom. I'd like to say I always knew it would work, but you only have to look back at previous posts to see how untrue that would be.

But it's been well worth the wait, and if you want an early flowering shrub, heavily scented, that doesn't have to star at any other time of year, I'd certainly put Winter Honeysuckle into the hat. Is there another shrub you think should join it?

 

The perfect cookbook design is...

We don't need cookery books. All we have to do is look at the Internet. At least, that's what people tell me but it'll never be a modus operandi that I'll be happy with.

Cookbooks through the years

Books are here to stay in my kitchen, especially as more, perhaps, than any other books, they tell a story. There's the Good Housekeeping my grandmother gave my mother when she got married, now held together by rubber bands to stop the covers falling off. Others hold favourite dessert recipes that I enjoyed as a child. Delia's One is Fun (now rarely consulted) went with me to Uni (isolationist that I was - still, others in my house used it too).

More recent volumes show a growing infatuation with spicy food, and a sprinkling of celebrity chefs - as well as the changes in recipe-book design. More and more pictures. Is it just me who feels there's a growing disconnect between cookbook designers and the people who use them? 

Prompted by increasing frustration, I've put together my own recipe for the perfect cookbook.

Spread from the Archers' Cookbook

The Recipe Book's Index...

...should include major ingredients as well as the recipe title. The Archers' Cookbook (a present from a relative before the BBC pushed Nigel off the roof) breaks the rule to such an extent that, back in the days when time passed more slowly, I actually created my own index. I mean, listing Buttered Caraway Cabbage under "B" means pretty much loses it for anyone wanting to spice up their greens.

Indices don't come any better than this from the Farmhouse Kitchen series

I based my own version on the best index I've ever come across - in the Farmhouse Kitchen books (remember the Yorkshire TV series from the 80s?). Recipes are listed by title, by category (desserts, cakes etc) and by major ingredients (eg beef, apple). If you have something left over in the fridge and need inspiration, a thorough index is better than a search engine.

Which takes me on to...

Cookbook layout

How do you look for recipes? Probably in the section dedicated to that part of meal. Most pan-meal recipe books begin with starter, move on to main courses, end with desserts. The Archers' Cookbook might have some leeway as a quirky evocation of village life, but it doesn't make it any easier to find Victorian Fairings when you're not sure if they garland the chapter showcasing the Brownies' Summer Picnic or The Ambridge Flower and Produce Show (and are indexed under Freda Fry!).

The Yeo Valley Cookbook suffers this malady too. It's divided into chapters such as The Dairy, The Fruit Garden, and Woods, Hedgerows, Fields and Streams, though it rescues itself through a proper Farmhouse Kitchen-style index.

Now the Yeo Valley Cookbook has a great deal going for it. It hasn't given me a duff recipe yet, and Husband's favourite dessert/cake (any time, really) is Blackberry and Brown Sugar Fingers. Besides this, I've made Poppy Seed Ice Cream and Twice-baked Goats' Cheese Soufflés to pleasing plaudits. If I'm flicking through for desserts, though, I have to search chapters back and front.

Recipe Book Illustration

Apart from dodgy divisions, they also commit another cardinal sin. Page colour. Photos have moved from helpful illustration to backgrounding the entire text. Looks great, until you realise the recipe is printed in white on an almost black background and you want to jot a note in the margin. I always note down ingredient substitutions, timings and ratings: "Good but not worth the effort" - that sort of thing. So it's hugely annoying when the only place to write visibly is across the middle of the picture on the opposite page.

A favourite recipe, close to impossible to annotate.

Which takes me on to...

Excess illustration

Few of my mother's cookbooks have pictures. Now every book is covered in them. Which is nice, if they're relevant. However, where they stray away from the actual recipes they're usually bigging up the author in some way. Yeo Valley have pages given over to life on the farm.

Spice I Am, which has some scrummy recipes from one of Sydney's leading Thai chefs, Sujet Saenkham, shows him tossing a lot of pans. OK, it adds colour, but when you're flipping through a book you just want to get to the meat of it, if you see what I mean. They're not coffee table books, for goodness' sake.

So that's it; quite a simple recipe. A decent index, photo moderation, and space to write. It's surprising how many cookbooks don't provide all three (or even one) these days.

In fact, I'm quite tempted to have a go at designing my own. I recently came across this thorough Designing a Cookbook article, while there are a few things I wouldn't mind copying from 35 Beautiful Recipe Book Designs. 

One day, perhaps. What would you like to change about modern recipe books?