Innholdsfortegnelse for March 19, 2025 i Country Life

Evenley Wood Garden, Northamptonshire IMAGINE if you combined the beauty of an old English wood, with its mixture of broad trees and skinny saplings, sudden clearings and dappled glades, with a garden where specimen trees, flowering shrubs and bulbous plants have been planted to give pleasure at different times of the year and you will have something of the hybrid that is Evenley Wood Garden near Brackley in Northamptonshire. The 60-acre wood first came to the notice of a keen local plantsman, Timothy Whiteley, when he was out hunting in the late 1970s. The Rhododendron ponticum that was growing beside the rides indicated a seam of acid soil running through the typically alkaline Northamptonshire clay. With such variation in soil, the woodland—which was only 700 yards from Whiteley’s home—would enable…

THEOPHRASTUS, the Greek scholar and botanist who lived in the 4th century BC, is believed to have given the name Dianthus to the plants we call pinks: dios meaning of Zeus and anthos, a flower. Dianthus have a sumptuous artistic pedigree, appearing everywhere from Renaissance paintings to Flemish tapestries and exquisite Elizabethan embroidery. They were known as gillyflowers, or sops-in-wine, referring to the Tudor habit of spicing wine with the petals. By the 17th century, 350 types of carnation could be named, captured in still life by Dutch Masters. The colliers of North-umberland were great growers of pinks, as were the weavers of Paisley, Renfrewshire, who kept up to 80 different ones in cultivation. Dianthus are generally native to the limestone regions of Southern Europe, some species naturalising in areas…

WRUNG out from reedy water marshes by Charles I and his Dutch advisors, the fertile farmland of the Fens may, one day, be reclaimed by the sea. These beautiful lowlands, scored with glistening dykes, support precious flora: fen violets, fen orchids and fen sedge, once used in thatching. However, they are also threatened by floods and rising sea levels. In this, they are not alone. The River Severn and the Thames estuary, with their rich birdlife, and the wildflower meadows and wetlands of south Kent are among a long list of British hotspots at risk of salination. As an island, wind-blown salt has always sprayed our coastline. However, salt’s intrusion into our groundwater and soils is an emerging threat that is caused by climate change, cautions Iain Gould. An associate…

IT was one of the finest lunches I’ve ever eaten and not a white tablecloth in sight. In fact, there wasn’t even a chair, rather a rickety plastic stool in a makeshift rattan shack on the outskirts of Luang Prabang, Laos. I was here for a bowl of hangover noodle soup and it sure didn’t let me down. First, fresh noodles, briefly blanched in boiling water, then drained and dumped in a brittle melamine bowl, the alabaster tangle drenched in steaming buffalo broth. As ever with these soups, this was merely the start. There were herbs to pick and tear, familiar mint and coriander and jagged, acerbic leaves that I’d never seen, let alone tasted. Chillies came fresh, powdered and in a pungent paste alongside two pots containing sugar and…

THE year 55BC was a bad one for the hares of Britain. With the arrival of Julius Caesar and his legions, things took a turn for the worse. In his Commentaries on the Gallic War, a self-promoting history of his career as Rome’s greatest general, Caesar paused in his descriptions of the warlike tribes he faced and the battles he fought to note that the Britons he encountered ‘do not regard it lawful to eat the hare… they do, however, breed them for amusement and pleasure’. This fastidiousness was bewildering to the invaders from the south, who enjoyed both hunting hares and cooking them. As with so much else, Roman tastes quickly took hold and the hares’ days of being coddled were over. That is not to say that the…

Hunting Ethics: A Personal Journey Nick Fox (Countryside Books, £20) I WISH I had had this book to hand 30 years ago when, as the new CEO of the Countryside Alliance, I was attempting to defend all fieldsports with only a limited experience of many of them. I would have had much more success in debates with those who regarded them all as ‘bloodsports’. This hugely impressive book is full of fascinating facts and entertaining animal anecdotes. Its breadth of knowledge, experience and research compare to the greats, such as science writers Yuval Harari and David Quammen. The author is a world-class falconer and an expert on birds of prey, a farmer and a conservationist. The extent of his research and experience of everything to do with hunting is breathtaking.…

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Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk ON Friday (March 21), it is World Poetry Day, a moment to reflect on the exciting announcement about the creation of a National Poetry Centre in Leeds. It is the brainchild of the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, who has argued that, until now, British poetry has never had a home. It is intriguing to reflect on what kind of relationship this most immaterial of art forms should have with worldly things. After all, one of the most famous sonnets in our language suggests: The world is too much with us; late and soonGetting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Its author, William Wordsworth, would no doubt have thought it amiss that one stipulation made by…

Heavenly hair I HAVE long been puzzled by The Creation of Adam (right) in the Sistine Chapel (‘The good, the bad and the ugly’, March 5). Although the only man on Earth, Adam has risen to the occasion by having a decent haircut and a shave; indeed, so thorough as to remove all other body hair, as well. Was there some celestial barber to call upon? Was Michelangelo’s David a client, too? Everybody else in the Old Testament has great long beards, if you go by the pictures. Dr Chris Godfrey, Greater London Child prodigy TO be appointed a cathedral organist aged 15 is unusual (‘The year the stars came out’, March 5), but even younger was Matthew Godwin who was 14 when employed as assistant organist and choir master…

THE magical transformation of a tiny seed into a flowering plant is one of the wonders of gardening. Few things bring as much pleasure as nurturing a plant from the moment a seed is sown until it is a flourishing part of the garden. It is a delight that never becomes stale. Growing plants from seed is easy and requires no sophisticated equipment. A pot, some compost, water and a sheltered place are all that is needed. Every year, the gardeners at Glyndebourne in East Sussex raise thousands of plants from seed. All begin life in a basic 3½in pot. If old pots are being reused, make sure that they have been washed and scrubbed clean of any lurking pests or disease. Use a ready-mixed seed or cutting compost, usually…

THE clack of hard tiles on a table top and the gentle knock of a crooked finger on wood are sounds as familiar in the British pub as the thunk of darts, the jingle of the till and grumbling conversation about the weather. Yet dominoes, the venerable game with which these noises are associated, spent seven centuries getting here. The game originated in China during the 12th-century Song Dynasty and arrived in Italy via the great trading city of Venice. Here, the game received its new name, in honour either of the domino, a spotted cape that was one of the costumes worn in the city’s famous masquerades, or of the black-and-white clothing of Dominican friars. Like rice and pasta, those other popular products of Italian-Chinese interaction, dominoes was slow…

WHEN the new owners of this house in Wiltshire came to update their home, it was a natural decision to call upon interior-decorating firm Robert Kime. ‘About 40 years ago, Robert decorated the house as his first project,’ says Orlando Atty, who has headed the company since Kime died in 2022. ‘The owners [antique-furniture expert Rosie Hayes, her husband and young family] asked me to make it theirs, without losing its welcoming feel.’ The house dates back to the 16th century and stands on the site of an even earlier dwelling. Its rich history is evident in the sitting room, once used as a courtroom, which is dominated by an ancient carved chimneypiece. ‘We established that we would keep the paint colour of the walls chosen by Robert,’ says Mr…

APPROPRIATELY enough, historical opinions on the edibility of hogweed may be summed up as ‘feed the stuff to pigs and eat the pigs’. As for cow parsley, it has always been viewed as nothing more than an irredeemable weed. Fortunately or not, today’s imaginative chefs have discovered ways of preparing almost any plant that is at least not actually poisonous. I must remind you that both plants are in the carrot family, a family that harbours several species that are extremely dangerous if eaten. Confusion will be allayed by remembering that hogweed and cow parsley are respectively hairy and slightly hairy, whereas the bad guys—hemlock, hemlock water dropwort and fool’s parsley—are hairless. Then there’s giant hogweed, an invasive streamside/wetland plant notorious for sensitising the skin to ultraviolet light, causing blisters…

EVERYONE is in favour of reforming our planning system. The trouble is that we all seem to have diametrically opposed aims. Angela Rayner wants to be free to build 1.5 million houses almost anywhere she feels they’re needed; environmentalists, worried that Britain has lost more biodiversity than almost any other European nation, yearn to protect wild Britain more effectively; archaeologists and historians aim further to conserve Britain’s past; walkers and cyclists hope to open up more of the country-side; country people desire to preserve the landscapes they love; and homeowners and small businesses long to get the planners off their backs. No wonder that whenever previous Governments have gone in for planning reform, they’ve ended up pleasing nobody. Nevertheless, this Government is clearly determined to proceed with the Planning and…

UNTIL Gertrude Jekyll showed us how to plant a flower border brimming with satisfying waves of colour, form and texture, no one had thought to do it. Now, almost 100 years later, the English herbaceous border (as at Upton Grey, Hampshire, above) remains the envy of the horticultural world. Equally odd is how we tend to think of Jekyll (1843–1932) as a fusty Edwardian; in fact, she was a pioneer and a radical in a male-dominated world, in planting and in life, paving the way for many to follow. She planted yuccas and seakale in her borders—unheard of then—and edged them with bergenias. The large leaves were easier for her to see, as she suffered from myopia, which had led her, in 1891, after training as an artist, to give…

ON his first day as head gardener to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, Derbyshire, in 1826, Joseph Paxton arrived at 4.30am, climbed over the garden wall and explored his new domain in the dark. At 6am, he was ready to give the gardeners their first orders, and by 9am he was having breakfast with the Duke’s housekeeper and her niece, Sarah, who was soon to become his wife. Paxton was, admittedly, extraordinarily talented and energetic by any standards, but it gives you some idea of the kind of stamina and enterprise a head gardener needs—not to mention the ability to get up at the crack of dawn. Head gardeners are the unsung heroes of our horticultural history, for few of them have ever attained the eminence of Paxton or…

CLOSE your eyes and think of a Rolls-Royce. We’ll wait. Back? Good. What colour did you imagine your Roller to be? Metallic dark grey? A classic bronze? Perhaps a smart, dark blue? Now take a breath and look again at the banana-yellow car on these pages. It’s no outlier, but is typical of Rolls-Royce’s launch fleet for the Ghost Series II, a parade of salmon pink, lime green, amethyst purple and powder blue. And that’s before you even open the door. These colours are no accident—not least because the ultra-luxury finish can require up to 20 coats. They make a statement: Rolls-Royce in 2025 isn’t merely serving up a post-Imperial throwback to past glories. These are cars for today, tomorrow and decades into the future. Rolls-Royces have been hauled by…

WELL-MADE armchairs are like old friends: comfortable, reliable and supportive. They can also be with you forever; constructed using traditional methods and filled with natural materials, they can be handed down through the generations and reinvented in a new fabric each time. According to Amanda Barrett, of furniture-maker George Smith (www.georgesmith.com), the ideal shape, size, height and level of support are subjective. ‘We often get asked what makes the most comfortable armchair, and it’s not a question we can answer; the only advice I can give is to try as many as possible.’ Two key elements to look out for are the suspension system and the fillings. Both will determine how weight is distributed, a factor that will significantly affect comfort. The team at George Smith hand-stitch double-cone springs, which…