BRITAIN’s first rockery was established in the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1774, with lumps of lava from Iceland, downland flint and chalk and 40 tons of stone from the site of the Tower of London. Its imaginative creator is not remembered for it. Neither is he celebrated as superintendent of George III’s gardens at Kensington Palace and St James’s Palace, nor as a member of the huddle of botanists who, in 1804, formed what would become the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), nor even as the central figure in a controversy involving a disputed treatment for diseased trees and a government grant of £1,500 (about £235,000 at today’s value) to ensure a supply of healthy oaks for the Navy during the Napoleonic war. The payment infuriated other botanists, who subjected his reputation to intense scrutiny.
Instead, we unwittingly commemorate William Forsyth when the forsythia bursts into bloom, the flowers proving so impatient that they cannot wait for the leaves, and we know our flavescent year is truly in its stride. Yet Forsyth, Scottish-born botanist and author, revered in his early years as an orchard expert, had nothing to do with the shrub that bears his name. It was an 18th-century import. First spotted in Japan and recorded by Carl Peter Thunberg in his Flora Japonica of 1784, it was misidentified as a lilac and classified as Syringa suspensa. A member of the olive family and widespread in the Far East, it was prized in China, where its flowers, lian qiao—‘golden bells’—were deemed anti-inflammatory and fever-reducing.
Denne historien er fra March 29, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 29, 2023-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.
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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.
