GARDENING
DAVID WHEELER
IN THE NIGHT GARDEN
Midnight. A three-quarters moon. A gibbous moon, thinly veiled under a gossamer haze. Further south, on the horizon, cauliflower clouds drift eastwards to worry the Cotswolds – no threat to my nocturnal plan. It’s high summer, 18°C (65°F) and balmy, yet fresh.
I was in bed by 9.30pm (listening to Chopin), daylight barely diminished, the alarm set for two hours thence. I slept until the alarm squeaks woke me; the CD long since stopped, the moon riding high.
Drained of colour, the landscape portrayed itself in keen monochromatic tones. Moonlight lacks the intensity for our eyes’ cones to see colour properly; the rods that see shapes instead of colours work with very low light intensities compared with the cones. Hence moonlight’s near black-and-white affect.
Owls. I dress and pull on warmer clothes than I really need in the expectation of an hour’s foray around our five-acre woodland garden.
Mad? No. I’m off to rehearse my olfactory skills. Just me, the owls, flitting bats and flurries of pollinating moths.
My fragrance guru is Stephen Lacey, whose Companion to Scented Plants (2014) is among my library indispensables. More recently, and more relevant to these scribblings, I discovered American horticulturist Peter Loewer, whose earlier (1993) book The Evening Garden has prompted several after-dark meanderings. Subtitled Flowers and Fragrance from Dusk till Dawn, it’s written for the curious, like me, and for ‘the many people who work and only have time to … enjoy their gardens after the daylight hours’.
Denne historien er fra July 2021-utgaven av The Oldie Magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra July 2021-utgaven av The Oldie Magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Travel: Retreat From The World
For his new book, Nat Segnit visited Britain’s quietest monasteries and islands to talk to monks, hermits and recluses
What is... a nail house?
Don’t confuse a nail house with a nail parlour. A nail house is an old house that survives as new building development goes on all around it.
Kent's stairway to heaven
Walter Barton May’s Hadlow Castle is the ultimate Gothic folly
Pursuits
Pursuits
The book that changed the world
On Marcel Proust’s 150th anniversary, A N Wilson praises his masterpiece, an exquisite comedy with no parallel
RIP the playboys of the western world
Charlie Methven mourns his dashing former father-in-law, Luis ‘the Bounder’ Basualdo, last of a dying breed
Arts
Arts
My film family's greatest hits
Downton Abbey producer Gareth Neame follows in the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great-grandmother, a silent-movie star
Books
Books
A lifetime of pin-ups
Barry Humphries still has nightmares about going on stage. He’s always admired the stars who kept battling on