I’M effectively a gardener now,’ confesses Zara Gordon Lennox, chatelaine of Gordon Castle in the Highlands of Scotland. ‘I help with the mowing, the weeding… we’re all working incredibly hard because we’re so short-staffed due to the crisis.’ It’s not only gardening she’s doing. The lockdown has devastated the castle’s income (with no visitors between February and July), so another side of the business has been fast-tracked: floristry.
When Zara and her husband, Angus, began restoring their eight-acre walled garden in 2015, flowers for cutting, among the vegetables and espaliered fruit trees, were always part of the plan, largely to decorate the castle and holiday cottages. Posies on the tables in the tea room led to enquiries as to whether they were for sale, so the team started making up bunches, first of sweetpeas, then of mixed stems. Lockdown, however, changed everything.
‘We’d bought in a whole load of primroses and primulas to sell just as we were all being told to stay indoors and I couldn’t bear for them to be chucked on the compost,’ remembers Zara. In an attempt to spread a little joy in a difficult time, she dropped them on random doorsteps in the village and, before long, people were asking if she could provide bouquets. ‘I think people noticed we were struggling and realised that, as with food, provenance is important and backing local businesses is important. Our customers were amazingly supportive and we now take orders online and deliver locally in a way we didn’t before.’
Denne historien er fra August 12, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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 August 12, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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
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.
