PUBLISHED in 1884, John Wood’s Hardy Perennials and Old-Fashioned Garden Flowers contains a sentence that changed British life: ‘It is a capital plant for the small town garden.
The plant in question was Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica). Wood’s intentions were good. He was encouraging Mr Pooter to garden above his pay grade by experimenting with a plant that was then considered outlandishly splendid and smart.
He wasn’t to know that ‘capital’ in this context would come to mean the £167 million or so now spent in the UK each year on dealing with the consequences of his recommendation.
Others in this period eulogised the knotweed, but they tended to advise planting it only on sites large enough to accommodate its marauding and monopolising. Sir Joseph Hooker, William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll were among the greats who extolled it as an ornament of the newly fashionable wild and woodland gardens and as a centrepiece for stately lawns, all the while peppering their praises with warnings about its expansionism.
Denne historien er fra September 18, 2018-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 18, 2018-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
