Pick of the Week

Nature's Prozac

As we find ourselves growing grim about the mouth this November, Ben Dark finds light and levity in the colours of the season, this week’s Garden Collective articles and a new arrival.

Ginkgo

Hello! Ben here,

It’s November so we start with some Herman Melville.

‘Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul… I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.’

So says his narrator in Moby-Dick. And we all know how that ends. I say that in drizzly November it is much safer to find some Ginkgo biloba instead. They’re out now in the brightest autumn yellow: Prozac in plant form.

But there are some dangers for Ginkgo watchers. Around here we have roads planted with Ginkgo. Some are female. They are dropping seed this week, each with an oozy coating that smells like it ought to be scooped up and tied in a little green bag.

On Wednesday my eldest slipped face-down in the Ginkgo slime. Howls and retching followed, all the way home to the bathtub. Poor thing, but all I could think was: ‘You don’t know how bad it really is, I’m putting you in The Garden Collective’s newsletter this week!’

And what should join the unlucky child in this gardening roundup?

The highlight of my week was a trip to Kew to see the autumn colours. Top marks for Ginkgoes. The bald cypresses (Taxodium distichum) also looked magnificent, russet columns doubled by their reflections in the lake. And I found this great little shrub:

Neoshirakia japonica. It practically glowed. This is in the euphorbia family and apparently quite hardy.

I loved this week’s articles on The Garden Collective. We were privileged to have Matt Pottage writing from between the ‘bedding and brambles’ on how his new Strategy for Horticulture in the Royal Parks will bring beauty to all and anger to no one at all (hahaha! Though… if anyone can do it…). The future looks stunning in the visuals he shared. Read if you missed:

Annie Guilfoyle suggested a more surefire way to escape the November dark than ginkgo-watching: fly to New Zealand! It’s high spring there. She describes a trip to Jo Wakelin’s garden in Central Otago, where jet lag gets her up and out at dawn, writing: ‘as the sun rose it was a moment in my life that I will never ever forget.’ A fine piece of garden escapism for any who need it.

Dark nights mean time for reading, and there’s no better place than in The Garden Collective’s archive. You could do worse than to start with a November piece from Simon Lycett. He writes in his warm and evocative way that:

‘What sparks my memory most of these Guy Fawkes Nights was the magic when a November garden, a place of brown and of blobs, suddenly became an excitement of silhouettes, illuminated in oranges, blues, red and greens. Every explosion of colour would be reflected, on wet shed roofs, within neighbouring windows, sparkling on mildewy greenhouse glass, and, for just a few seconds, filling with colour spaces that then returned to the damp and the dun.’

How’s that for garden writing?! Nothing like it for drying a drizzly soul. Find the whole thing here:

For those who feel gloom is best kept at bay by getting up and going out, there are a few events on:

The Garden Collective’s resident blues-busters James and Joe are bringing their podcast to the Garden Museum on Tuesday the 10^th. There’s a live stream for those who can’t make it. Tickets here.

Saltex, the groundskeepers’ trade show, is on at the NEC in Birmingham on the 11^th and 12^th. If you can claim any vague connection to keeping grass short and soil aerated, you can register and attend for free. It’s amazing! When I looked after a bowling green, I went every year. So many machines and robots.

The ex-head gardener at Lambeth Palace, Nick Stewart Smith, is giving an online lecture on Monday 9^th about the 1000-year history of the Palace garden. Tickets are only a fiver and support the London Parks and Gardens Trust. I read his book when it came out and enjoyed it a lot.

And if none of that has worked and you still find yourself ‘grim about the mouth’, then here: