Weeding the Web

What's changed? A visit to Scotland's public gardens (1903)

Little seems to lend itself better to the pleasure of reading vintage magazines than gardening. And, if you share the same enthusiasm, I suspect you too are most captivated by the small ads - strange potions, long banned; tools from long-lost British companies; cunning methods of pest control. "I wonder why they don't make the Ooja-watsit Slug Enticer anymore," you muse as you turn the pages.

The American magazine, Horticulture, is celebrating its 110th birthday with a free download on its website of its 1904 (yes, I know) editions.

They're great fun to browse. It's a time when you could order 2x2x4 crates of holly for Christmas ($5 a case) and when, tantalisingly unexplained, an ongoing strike in glass factories in Belgium, threatened the supply of greenhouse glass, giving rise to the recommendation to obtain only the "best Pennsylvania makes". (Please tell me you find this sort of thing fascinating too...)

And then, what do you find in the December 10th pages? Random Thoughts from Abroad - a trip in August 1903 to the exotic shores of Britain. After nine days across the Atlantic, landing in Liverpool, the writer rushed headlong for the public gardens of Scotland.

First, Kelvin Grove Park, within the city limits of Glasgow:

I was much struck on entering the grounds to observe the stunted and stumpy growth; also the sparse foliage of trees and shrubs within the park.

Oh, dear. Neglect, perhaps? Lack of expertise?

On closer inspection the cause was clear, the foliage being thickly covered with soot vomited from an endless number of tall manufacturing chimnies (sic) that surround Glasgow...: to these can be added numberless dwelling-house chimnies belching forth the same sooty deposit resulting from the combustion of soft coal.

It's not something we often manage to factor into our imaginations, is it, the overwhelming pollution that industrial areas were subject to?  I know that asphidistras were useful for their resistance to the fumes in gaslit houses, but the all-pervading sootiness of life in some cities is not something I've really contemplated in relation to plants.

Journeying on to Edinburgh, the writer, K Finlayson, finds the gardens looking much better, contributing no doubt to the ever-present competition that exists between Glasgow and Auld Reeky. He describes a display of violas the size of pansies in Princes Street Gardens:

Three rows of different colours, white, yellow and blue, extending the whole length of the garden. They were planted in rows in their respective colours  in front of a large serpentine, so-called, shrubbery border banked up against the railway bed for the purpose of screening the locomotives from view as they traverse the garden. The length of this border being nearly, if not fully, a quarter of a mile, was again instrumental in helping to make the scene impressive and beautiful.

So, while much has improved, some things have been lost. It's rare to find this sort of display today and, given that I took no photos of a long and magnificent border but rather concentrated on the grass when visiting Edinburgh in 2010, I think I'm on safe ground in suggesting that nothing like this is laid out there these days. (Do comment below if you think I'm wrong.)

 However, there were displays that brightened the dour stone of the Scott Memorial:

 

And the Floral Clock at the station end of Princes Street Gardens is always worth checking out, the design each year based on a topical anniversary or theme:

In fact, it's slightly surprising that Mr Finlayson didn't comment, as it began ticking in June 1903, would have been brand-new when he visited and was the first of its kind in the world. Perhaps our guide disapproved of such fripperies, or perhaps the planting - a geometrical pattern each year until 1928 - wasn't to his taste. I suspect, however, that he missed it, leaving by a different exit, still dazzled by that quarter-mile border.

 

Death by gardening magazine - tell me how I save myself

This is not the blogpost I intended to write. That was about designers' favourite flowers, as discussed at a Futurescape seminar last November. But that's on hold. Why? Because I can't find the blasted notes.  Does this happen to you?

The annoyance precipitated, over the last couple of days, a search through paper - and paper is everywhere. Which explains why the notebook has disappeared, and it has me pondering: What do other people about the incoming streams of information? I have piles of gardening and industry magazines - Kitchen Garden, The Garden Design Journal, ProLandscaper, Which? Gardening, The Garden... 

My victory yesterday was throwing out a year's worth of The Oldie, to which I subscribed in 2008 to gauge whether it might be a magazine I could write for.  I never got round to thinking up quirky articles for it, and such aged mags are useless for market research. It was lovely putting them in the bin.

But what about the gardening ones? In theory, they're an extensive reference (though sadly only Which? Gardening includes an annual index nowadays). If I look through them I'll find articles about things that weren't of interest but now are. From where I am right now I can see that a The Garden from 2011 has an article on selecting cooking apples to grow, which I'm intending to do this year. 

(In fact, hold on, I'll just go and get it before that disappears too.)

But it's not just magazines, which since yesterday are now tied in neat bundles of twelve, according to year. Still taking up space, but looking...ordered.  What about the notes for blogposts and articles? The press releases that might come in handy for that article that requires more research than you've currently got time for? How do you organise all that paper?

When I first began writing I kept the notes for articles published in cardboard folders. Now, they're bulging and spilling all over the place. My working space looks nothing if not creative, but the tidemark of paper is threatening to wash across the floor.

I could disembowel the mags. But have you ever tried downsizing in this manner? I once trawled through years of writing magazines, cutting out articles that might prove useful. The result was that, instead of mountains of magazines, I had a slippery pile of giant ring-binders, full of ragged pages that I never looked at again. I think they're still in the loft.

Sometimes I imagine I'll be found one day, squashed flat beneath a splayed pile of A4 glossies, paper mites testing out the palatability of my flesh. It would only be just. I've always found it difficult to throw things away, but paper-held information is, by far, my worst vice (let's not contemplate the state of my archived emails).

So what should I do about it? I'm looking for help here. What do you do? Do you find it easy to chuck things? How long do you leave it? Do you have a clear list of subjects that you save information on, and throw away everything else? Have you got an amazing filing system? Or memory?

There's no doubt that Something Has To Be Done. But how do I bring myself to do it? What do you do? Is this even a problem you have? I'd love to hear how you manage to keep on top of things.

Greenprints - Twenty Years of Garden Writing

This year has seen the twentieth anniversary of Greenprints, a delightful quarterly magazine, the autumn edition of which has just dropped through my letterbox.

Subtitled The Weeder’s Digest, and dedicated to the “human, not the how-to” side of gardening, it eschews information articles (so nothing on how to grow your cabbages or new blooms this season) and, instead, offers thoughtful, humorous and poignant essays inspired by gardens and gardening; it’s very personal writing.

Pat Stone, the editor, gives it a very warm touch. He himself is held in great affection by his readers, who like to be kept up to date with his family, so the mag usually includes a brief update on what’s been happening and, while Pat is editing, Becky his wife is i/c subscriptions.

It's a real mom-and-pop enterprise (as they say in the States), published from their home office in North Carolina, but that doesn't stop it being thoroughly professional. Pat was Garden Editor at Mother Earth News back in the 1980s, and has also co-edited Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul, one of the hugely successful Chicken Soup series.

Greenprints is a feel-good publication, featuring poetry, quotations and charming illustrations, as well as around fifteen stories per issue. One of the regular contributing editors, with a humorous outlook on life, is Mike McGrath, the erstwhile Editor-in-Chief of Organic Gardening Magazine (the US one, not the defunct UK mag) who is known over the Pond for You Bet Your Garden! a long-running syndicated Public Radio show. 

If you wonder if Greenprints is for you, then have a dig round past issues, where you get a rundown of contents and good flavour of what's inside. CD selections are also available.

And, given that I’ve just visited two garden centres, both of which were putting up their Christmas grottoes, I’ll just whisper very quietly that a subscription might make a jolly nice present for a garden enthusiast.

Recording moths with National Moth Night

National Moth Night takes place on 18th-19th September. Running since 1999, it’s open to everyone, expert or beginner, to record moths in the garden or elsewhere, and has turned up some unexpected results. Last year the White Prominent moth appeared in Ireland, seventy years after its last sighting in the British Isles.

If you're wondering how you'd get close enough to a moth to effect an introduction, then the National Moth Night website has instructions for bringing them to you, including this rather fascinating idea of wine ropes.

Moth Night was started by Atropos, the journal for butterfly, moth and dragonfly enthusiasts. They also carry instructions (see their Garden Moths page) on moth traps and give a list of flowers to bring them to your garden. The best are blooms which smell strongly at night, such a night-scented stock, lonicera and red campion.

Must plant some; perhaps that will keep the little blighters from coming in the window.