How feasible is it to grow a North American prairie in southern England? Non Morris finds out
SOWING a prairie is 'an act of terrifying alchemy' proclaims James Hitchmough, professor of Horticultural Ecology at Sheffield University and most famous, perhaps, for his role in designing the intoxicating rainbows of planting at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park for the London 2012 Olympics. 'When you create a prairie, it's like throwing a pebble into a pond, the ripples come out, but you don't really know what eventually is going to happen.' This sense of a journey into the unknown attracted rather than deterred eminent landscape designer Tom Stuart-Smith, who asked Prof Hitchmough to help him create a North American Prairie at his own richly textured garden at Serge Hill, Hertfordshire.
'I had worked with James on a few similar projects and I wanted to do one for myself and learn, otherwise I was speaking from half experience.' Mr Stuart-Smith was drawn to the idea of creating a space that would sit easily within the gently shifting mosaic of his garden, with its wonderful rolling stretches of traditional wildflower meadow. At the height of summer, when the yellow sunflowerlike heads of Silphium laciniatum dance on 9ft of slender stem, the Prairie offers an intense dose of 'what evolutionary biologists call supernormal stimuli-the kind of heightened reaction that a blackbird might have to a cuckoo's egg appearing in her nest'.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 07, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 07, 2022-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
