The Garden History Blog

In New York Botanical Garden 2019

It’s that time of the year again when, in most parts of the western world, shops have been stocking up on pumpkins for Halloween. I admit its not a celebration I particularly like but  even so I’ve often wondered why a big orange fruit from North America should have anything to do with All Saints Eve, so  I thought I’d investigate a bit further.

What I discovered is that although man’s association with pumpkins and squash of all kinds goes back more than 10,000 years their association with Halloween is much much more recent and, of course, is really nothing to do with pumpkins at all!

Chromolithograph postcard, ca. 1910.

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Flea Beetle
photo by Tomasz Klejdysz

Like most gardeners I’m used to discovering that various crops have been attacked by insects. This summer it was particularly that old favourite the flea beetle on brassicas – no broccoli or rocket survived their depredations almost overnight.

I don’t like spraying but there are times when I feel ready to say “organic gardening be damned!”  It made me wonder how our ancestors coped with garden pests so this week and next I’m going to explore some of the ways  they did.

Insects, after Jacob and Joris Hoefnagel,  1637 

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A family wedding took me to County Durham recently and on the way  we passed The Angel of the North. It is such an extraordinary addition to the landscape that on the way home we did a detour and went to see it close up.

Now 25 years old its open arms greet visitors as they near Gateshead  by road or rail and it’s pretty clear why The Angel has been voted year after year as one of the top UK landmarks in national newspapers and polls. It is also one of the most viewed pieces of art in the world, seen by more than one person every second. That’s at least 90,000 every day or 33 million every year! Not even the Mona Lisa can top that.

But what also intrigued me was the way that  the landscape  immediately around about the Angel has been transformed in a way that I’d guess neither Anthony Gormley who created it or Gateshead Council who commissioned it are likely to have expected.

From Making an angel [full reference at the end of the post]

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Ralph Treswell’s 1587 survey of Holdenby

. Holdenby in Northamptonshire was one of the greatest houses and gardens of Elizabethan England, in fact of  the whole of 16thc Europe.  Although largely demolished within about 80 years a small  part of the mansion survives  as part of the current Victorian house. However, the main reason I was so keen to visit recently with friends from the Birkbeck Garden History Group was to see what, if anything was left of the original gardens.  These were recorded  in the 1580s by Ralph Treswell, the leading surveyor of his day, not just once but twice so we have almost got before and after plans of what they were like, and amazingly the main features can still be made out so  it was definitely worth the trip.

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Queen Adelaide by John Simpson, 1832

Let’s start today with a pub quiz question.  Who was Queen Adelaide? Did you even know Britain once had a Queen Adelaide?   Would it help if I told you that before her engagement to a royal duke she was Her Serene Highness Princess Adelheid Luise Therese Caroline Amalie of Saxe-Meiningen?

If you have heard of Adelaide it’s probably because of the capital city of   South Australia or one of the many pubs and streets round the country which were named after her.   Still not a clue?

And in any case what’s Queen Adelaide doing in a blog about gardens?

a rather different portrait of her

In fact she’s already made a passing appearance in seven  earlier posts : those about the early growers of money-puzzle trees,  the career of Charles Macintosh,  James Bateman’s giant book of orchids,   the charitable work of George Glenny, the story of the Other London Zoo,    the botanical artist Augusta Withers and most recently in a post about Belvoir. That might suggest that she had some interest in gardens and flowers, as indeed she did.

This post is going to explore that a bit further…

The Gardens of Bushy Park, Henry Zeigler, thought to have been commissioned by Adelaide c1842

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