Innholdsfortegnelse for 15-Jan-2020 i Country Life

IT’S tempting to look out of the window at the leafless trees and dormant flower borders and think that this is the quiet time in the garden, but that would be quite wrong. Midwinter is exactly the right time to pull on sturdy boots and head outdoors. Without the distractions of petal and leaf, the bones of the garden are clearly visible. As the cold air clears the mind, memories return of last summer and all those plants you meant to move because they were in the wrong place—those spreading clumps of Dutch iris that you cursed because you had forgotten to divide them are now limp, their spear-like foliage flattened on the dark soil, just waiting to be dug up. ‘It’s not so much mindfulness that we need more…

I SEEK the heralds of spring. I yearn for lighter evenings and I know I’m guilty of getting ahead of myself in anticipating the season’s arrival. However, all is well. The snowdrops that proved such a balm in a difficult period of my life two years ago are nodding gently beneath the beech hedge at the cottage. They’re a symbol of a new dawn, the new year’s resurrection. Nature is waking up. In Barnes, the delightful pair of Egyptian geese has been proudly showing off its nine goslings that hatched last week. I find it extraordinary that, once again, the young have arrived so early in the year. For some weeks, the gander has been fussing around the edge of the pond—they’re usually inseparable—as the goose has been sitting somewhere.…

A FEW days ago a friend showed me a most interesting tinder lighter which was used by his father during the Indian Mutiny Campaign. The contrivance is shaped like a pistol and has a tube several inches long which curves round in the rear into the shape of a fat little butt. Underneath the upper tube is a short tube open at both ends. This lower tube is attached close up to the upper one just like the magazine of a Winchester rifle. The little machine is made of German silver or something similar in appearance, and the rounded butt has a lid and serves as a reservoir to keep the caps in. On the front of the gate is stamped ‘Jean & le François, Breveté… S. G.’ —Fleur-de-Lys 1)…

Letter of the week The good, the bad and the ugly I SMILED when I came across the coverline ‘How to bring Nature into your garden’ (September 25). Nature is all around us here, although it sometimes wears a grim visage. We are surrounded by gnarled eucalyptus, black pines, cedars, oaks and elms, but many are falling victim to one of the most severe and prolonged droughts in modern Australian history. The air is full of smoke from bush fires and we haven’t had the luxury of rain for four months. Then, this morning, I saw a wedge-tailed eagle soaring on barn-door wings. Shadowed in a copse stood a family of kangaroos, one with a tiny joey. Thousands of white corellas shriek and cry for food. Yes, Nature is,…

ATHENA is not usually moved to comment on matters of international politics, but the recent threat by the President of the United States to target cultural sites in the ongoing crisis in the Middle East is impossible to ignore. Writing on Twitter last week, he warned that America had ‘targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level and important to Iran and the Iranian culture’. These, he promised, would ‘be hit very fast and very hard’ in retaliation for any Iranian attacks on Americans or American assets. ‘This threat fails to comprehend what a dangerous enemy heritage can be to those who assault it’ The implied judgement behind this threat is that cultural heritage is too valuable…

IF there’s one plant you must buy as soon as the year turns, it’s the hellebore—because there’s so much variety on offer. Many hybrid hellebores (also known as Oriental hellebores) are raised from seed and, as a result, they vary from seedling to seedling. The only way to be sure of what you are buying is to see them in flower, early in the year. There are elegant singles, anemone-centred ruffs and fully fledged doubles. The flowers can be lightly freckled, heavily spotted, picotee-edged, veined or simple plain Janes, with colours that vary from soot-black to every shade of pink, clear-yellow, apple-green and virginal white. Some gardeners love to lift a swooning hellebore flower, but others prefer an upward facing sun-worshipper. Whichever you prefer, early flying bumblebees often get their…

THE training process begins in September with the wall-trained roses. It’s a slow process: some roses can take up to 10 days to train. The team uses tripod ladders to reach the top. The foliage is stripped from the stems before pruning to lessen the spread of black spot and remove pests that might overwinter. The collected leaves are not composted in the garden; most go for green waste. Once the leaves are off, the standard practice applies—the diseased, the dying and damaged parts are removed with sharp secateurs. The object is to keep a balance of new and old wood, but retain the structure. On average, 60% of the new wood is kept and an equal proportion of older wood is removed if it looks unproductive. The garden team…

Spouses of snorers A South Korean company has designed a pillow with sensors that connect to a ‘solution box’; as snoring accelerates, it inflates the pillow until the culprit turns over Merry Men Nottinghamshire’s royal Sherwood Forest—famous haunt of men in tights messing about with bows and arrows—has been named the third most Instagrammed forest in the world, second only to Germany’s Black Forest and the Amazon Rainforest UK property After a year of uncertainty, the fog has lifted; prices in prime regional markets will rise by 1% in 2020 and 11% over the next five years, says Knight Frank Fresh northern air Within the next three years, York will become the first UK city to ban private cars to its medieval centre; only buses and disabled drivers will be…

A PLAN is afoot to reduce the number of grey squirrels in the UK by making some of them infertile through gene editing. They arrived from America in the 19th century and have become about as popular as Japanese knot-weed; the grey invaders tear up the nests of songbirds, stop oaks and beeches from growing by stripping bark and carry a deadly virus that could see their red cousins wiped out by 2030. There are between three and six million grey squirrels in the UK, compared with only 140,000 reds. Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, perhaps best known for Dolly the Sheep, would like to create gene-edited male squirrels and then release them into the wild. When they breed, their female offspring will be infertile and male offspring will spread the DNA…

I HAVE a special hatred for electric toys that make noises. I find something intensely irritating about their endless repetition of notes or tunes, not to mention the tinny quality of the sound they produce. Well aware of my dislike, the children have occasionally enjoyed torturing me with them. One of them, for example, long delighted in a hat badge that played Jingle Bells and was impossible to silence. But they are growing up and when, one day last summer, the badge gave a final strangled croak and died, I thought I might enjoy peace at last. How wrong I was. Last week, our eldest child unexpectedly produced a belated Christmas present for their sibling. I thought the idea rather charming, until the wrapping paper came off and revealed what…

Just hold on Q My husband is in the army and he’s going away again. I know I should be used to it by now, but somehow it actually seems to get harder. Not only do I have two young children, I’m also pregnant. I have no idea how I’m going to cope without him and am sinking into despair. K. J., Hampshire A Knowing that our hearts ache for you is hollow comfort. Knowing that he is earning a degree of respect accorded to very few isn’t much help. The raising of the next generation is hard under any circumstances—as hard as it is to defend them. Advertisers’ images of familial togetherness are cruelly at odds with reality, not only in the service professions. Until Christina Schmid, widow…

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Anemone coronaria Flowering from late February until April, these have an excellent vase life, especially if cut just as the petals begin to open. I particularly like the dark, velvety petals of Mistral Blue, Bordeaux and Mistral Vinato Ranunculus asiaticus These come in a great range of beautiful colours, from soft pastel shades to rich bright orange and vibrant pinks, and each plant produces lots of stems, which is particularly handy early in the year. The Elegance range is really special Tulipa Tulips are best in their first year, so we treat them as annuals. Instead of cutting the stem when harvesting, we pull it up with the bulb attached, which gives an extra-long stem and a clear planting bed for the next crop. The double and parrot types are…

• If you buy hellebores in January or February, wait until March before planting them • If hellebore foliage is green and leathery, it’s best to cut off all the foliage in early December to prevent a leaf spot disease (Microsphaeropsis hellebori) from spreading. Loosen the soil afterwards with a long-handled fork. Leave any attractively marbled foliage alone, however—it’s a great winter feature • Hellebores hate winter-wet ground, because they spread by surface-rooting rhizomes that creep at soil level. They prefer full sun in spring and dappled shade in summer—lightly canopied deciduous trees and shrubs are excellent. A slope also helps • Hellebores need feeding. John Massey recommends a high potash feed, such as Chempak No 4, in August or September. Vitax Q4 also works well. Keep the feed away…

New Dawn (America, 1930) A perpetual-flowering sport of New Dawn, this deliciously fragrant rose bears lots of small, silver-pink flowers and the shiny, olive-green foliage sets the flowers off beautifully. Two roses cover a huge area and rise to 20ft Wedding Day (Sir Frederick Stern, 1950) Raised at Highdown in West Sussex, a chalk garden, this garden rambler produces large trusses of yellow buds that open to creamy white. The conspicuous orange stamens set it apart from other white rambler roses. A prolific once-only flowering plant, it produces amazing winter hips. Up to 35ft Mme Grégoire Staechelin (Dot Spain, 1927) This free-flowering, Spanish-bred, pale-pink climber has petals that curve backwards to reveal deeper pink backs. It produces huge numbers of flowers in June, followed by orange-red hips, and will tolerate…

Maple pannacotta with mixed-nut brittle Lightly grease six pudding moulds with vegetable oil and set aside. In a saucepan, combine 400ml of single cream, 200ml of whole milk, one teaspoon of vanilla paste and 150ml of maple syrup. Heat until almost boiling, then drop in five sheets of gelatine that have been soaked in cold water until soft. Whisk together before pouring into the prepared moulds. Chill until set. Meanwhile, make the brittle by heating 450g of caster sugar, 100ml of water, 100g of butter and 125g of golden syrup in a saucepan. Bring it to a boil, but don’t stir, just wait for it to turn a dark caramel. As soon as it does, add 350g of mixed nuts. Stir and pour onto greaseproof paper, then leave to cool.…

Gentlemen were provided for among the jewellery, with links, studs and at least one interesting gold signet ring, at £356. It was set with a shield-shaped bloodstone, with an intaglio carved crest of a crowing cockerel, and it came in its original shaped ring box by Mappin & Webb, dating from the firm’s years in the Queen Victoria Street, EC2, building that was demolished amid great acrimony in 1994 and replaced by No 1 Poultry. Unusually, a metal die-stamp, engraved with the same crest and the motto ‘Virtute Vici’ (I conquered by virtue) accompanied the ring. This was in a turned boxwood case stamped Parkins & Gotto, 24 Oxford St, W, which dated it to between 1860 and 1899, and ‘Ingram’ was handwritten on the bottom. The crest and motto…

AS the new theatrical year takes time to get underway, I find myself thinking back to some of the great names we lost in 2019: in particular, an actor, a dramatist and two directors between whose lives there are strange connections and who all, in different ways, had a profound impact on British theatre. I felt a particular pang over the death of Albert Finney for personal reasons. Growing up in the Midlands, I found myself, in my late teens, becoming a devotee of the old Birmingham Repertory Theatre in Station Street. One day in 1956, I chanced to see a piece of Irish whimsy called Happy as Larry by Donagh MacDonagh. The play included a chorus of dancing tailors and I couldn’t take my eyes off one who…

FOR the past three months, the workshops at Dumfries House, Ayrshire—which was saved for the nation by The Prince of Wales in 2007 and is now the headquarters of The Prince’s Foundation—have resounded with the clangings of students creating a new 33ft-tall obelisk (above) for Poundbury to a design by Ben Pentreath. Stonemasons and carvers perfected 20 separate blocks, which were then assembled in the Dorset town using traditional sand-casting techniques and unveiled earlier this month. Traditional building skills are among many causes championed by the Foundation, which, this year, will launch Building Arts, a new programme for teaching that will help secure the future of heritage glass-work, ceramics, painting, carving, metalwork, sculpture and textiles. ‘Through our courses focused on traditional building skills, we hope to inspire a future generation…

Wild swimming Those fond of taking a dip won’t be thrilled to hear water companies are polluting our loveliest rivers, such as the Windrush, Aire and Itchen Fresh meat Farming communities are disappointed at the lack of balance in a Channel 4 programme, in which George Monbiot claimed livestock farmers should grow trees and the public eat cultured meat and protein flour derived from bacteria instead Keeping it in the family Christmas arguments have led to a 114% spike in will rewrites and disinheritances, says a law firm. Lawyers are bracing themselves Cornish sheep A flock of 100 has been stolen from a farmer’s field in the village of Trerulefoot; as police investigate, the Countryside Alliance is urging farmers to install CCTV, security fences and internal trackers…

2018 was a record-breaking year for white Burgundy, but not necessarily in the way winegrowers would have wished. The harvest began very early, in the last days of August, after a torrid summer, and acidity levels—often seen as crucial for quality—were quite low in many cases. The best of the wines, however, appear to have great tension and elegance, as well as richness. Why you should be drinking them It was undoubtedly a warm year, but at a couple of tastings of 2018 cask samples before Christmas, I found many whites had lovely freshness and better balance than I associate with other hot years, such as 2015, 2009 and 2005. The reds have been seen as the stars of 2018, but some of the whites won’t be far behind.…

The blackcurrant bush is a large object that produces shoots from ground level. To keep it productive, the oldest third of these shoots should be removed each year. Now is a good time. Take secateurs, and perhaps loppers, and look over the bush. Single out the thickest and hoariest of the shoots and cut each cleanly to the base, pausing to inspect between strikes. As you work, remove any spindly shoots, too. Once the job is done, you will be left with productive growth and can look forward to a new crop coming up to carry on the rotation.…

January (grown and picked around the site) • Mahonia (November– February) • Hamamelis (December –March) • Viburnum x bodnantense Dawn (October–March) February to March (planned and grown in the cutting garden) • Anemone coronaria (under glass February–March) • Helleborus (February–April; for floating in water or for seed pods later) • Iris reticulata (February –March) and snowdrops (January–March) in terracotta pots (in cold frames) • Papaver nudicaule (Icelandic poppies grown under glass March–April) • Ranunculus (under glass March–April) • Daffodils (March–May) April to May • Tulips (April–May) • Alliums (May–June) • Aquilegia (May–July) • Astrantia (May–August) • Bearded Iris (May–June) • Biennials such as foxgloves (May–July), Anthriscus sylvestris Ravenswing (May–July), honesty (May–June, but also for seedheads in autumn), sweet rocket (May–June) and wallflowers (April–May) • Camassia (May–June) • Fritillaria imperialis (April–May)…

The Sphere, large, £840 each, Architectural Heritage (01386 584414; www.architectural-heritage.co.uk) Queen Anne urn and pedestal, £650, Capital Garden Products (01580 201092; www.capital-garden.com) Dragon Glass steel and Dutch gold-leaf sphere, from £4,950, Cavendish Stone (01747 842214; www.cavendishstone.com) William Kent urn, £1,014, Chilstone (01892 740866; www.chilstone.com) Ham House pineapple, £349, Haddonstone (01604 266000; www.haddonstone.com) Set of four composition stone figures of the Classical elements, £3,800, Jardinique (01420 560055; www.jardinique.co.uk) Italian carved-limestone garden bench-seat, £12,500, Lassco (020–7394 2100; www.lassco.co.uk) Meditating Buddha cast-iron statue, £236.50, Round Wood of Mayfield (01435 867072; www.roundwood.com) Corten panel, £128.50 each, Round Wood of Mayfield (01435 867072; www.roundwood.com) Pair of large, 20th-century patinated bronze lions, £13,730, Westland London (020–7739 8094; www.westlandlondon.com)…

Wrought Iron Grape chandelier, £1,104, Besselink & Jones (020–7584 0343; www.besselink.com) 24-arm Leaf chandelier, £11,760, Charles Edwards (020–7736 8490; www.charlesedwards.com) Antique White Leaves chandelier, £580, Cox & Cox (0330 333 2123; www.coxandcox.co.uk) Anjou chandelier, £2,682, Vaughan (020–7349 4600; www.vaughandesigns.com) Gold Palm Tree chandelier, £398, Graham & Green (01225 418200; www.grahamandgreen.co.uk) Highlands chandelier, large, £5,740, plus shades, Holloways of Ludlow (020–7602 5757; www.hollowaysofludlow.com) Sussex pendant light in Old Gold, £662.50, plus shades, Jim Lawrence (01473 826685; www.jim-lawrence.co.uk) Globe chandelier, £905, Julian Chichester (020–7622 2928; www.julianchichester.com) Garrick chandelier, £400, Neptune (01793 427450; www.neptune.com) Acanthus chandelier, £1,720, Paolo Moschino for Nicholas Haslam (020–7730 8623; www.nicholashaslam.com) Larger Halo chandelier, from £490, Pooky (020–7351 3003; www.pooky.com)…

JANUARY is fantasy-gardening month, when you lean upon your metaphorical rake and cast an eye over vegetable beds bursting with illusory vigour, all from the comfort of your own bed, tucked up and imagining things. For the catalogues have arrived, those pornographers of herbage, verbiage, greenery and legumes; the Whizzer and Chips of the potager; the TLS of vegetables, the OK! of the kitchen garden, the ¡Hola! of the allotment. I can think of nothing more inspiring than the garden catalogue. Outside howls the wind, lashes the rain, but here by the fire, tucked up in bed, blooms the promise. I could imagine religions founded on less than this. The gang are all here. Thomas Etty potters behind the cucumber frames, like Mr McGregor. Here are my alliums, leeks ‘hardy…