Emma Bridgewater On Trees & Walks
When Matthew and I bought our first house in Fulham twenty years ago the garden was empty but for the predictable London population of sycamore seedlings and tired old shrubs.
The only survivor manfully struggling on was a fine specimen of the outdated but, in fact rather wonderful, rose BLUE MOON whose cut flowers astonished the most ferocious garden snobs. A friend, Mike Pilkington ,planned our new garden; tired grass, by then destroyed by a litter of hyper-active Lurcher puppies was replaced with soft London bricks and robust trellis divided the plot into three rooms ready to disappear under blankets of Akebia, various clematis and roses. As a parting gift Mike gave us a mimosa tree. A spindly green stalk weedier than the bamboo that supported it. With very little confidence I planted it at the bottom of the garden assuming that frost, squirrels and general lack of skill would be the end of it. HOW WRONG. Within two years in the micro climate of West London it had burst forth, its trunk forearm thick and its feathery top twenty feet high. Then in dank February it flooded us with canary yellow fluffy flowers which filled the kitchen with that most delicious smell and brought the glamour of the nice flower market to the Fulham road. A year later serious lopping was required and after flowering another friend and Matthew pollarded the growing giant, a year later we were again picking wedding-size bunches of mimosa.
We sold the house fifteen years ago but when I walk past it on the way to our London office in February I still peer through the narrow gap between our old house and its neighbour to see a giant puffball of brightest yellow. Next to it is a black walnut now forty feet high. I suppose this is the classic new gardener’s fault, to cram into a small garden plants which look so small in their early stages but quickly grow too big for their neighbours. A footnote to the mimosa. The neighbours, whose garden was a spotless homage to the Spanish holiday, all yuccas and patio, chopped their side of the tree hard back to the fence every year just before the flower buds broke which must have looked so sad from their side.
I am not sure that one should always be too careful about spacing as trees are not sacred. When we moved to Norfolk we planted hundred of tiny trees complete with tubes and canes and while half had been chopped down by the time we left this year they had done their duty nursing up their companions , blocking unsightly views or satisfying an impatient gardeners desire for growth. This is not a symptom of the throw away society. The great landscape gardeners of the eighteenth century knew well that poplars would give near immediate form to their newly planted clumps and groves while the more permanent subjects, beech or oak were growing to maturity. When those trees were tall enough to define the required forms in the landscape the imposter poplars were felled and the survivors allowed to grow on. Of course large trees were transported even then, Capability Brown ordered mature Oaks to be dragged from one place to another, roots carefully bound in sacking, by teams of straining oxen. Now that great technological advance the Tree spade cuts through the roots of semi-mature hardwoods, cradles them in its steely arms and replants them in their new homes with a minimum of fuss so poplars are not required.
Last week we drove from Gatwick Airport to Petersfield in Hampshire and stopped to look at Petworth House. Needless to say the house was shut on a Friday but the park was not. Walking from the unexceptional car park over the brow of a slight incline the perfect rolling parkland appeared. Oaks, Beeches and that most lovely but unsung parkland tree, the hawthorn were scattered in this perfect picturesque landscape turning gold in the first days of autumn. Walking through the dry grassland was surely exactly the experience that Capability Brown intended when he manipulated what must anyway have always been a beautiful piece of topography into seven hundred acres of Campania. So perhaps now is the time to search out more parks and wooded gardens to enjoy the best show till next spring….