My family knows what I like. For my birthday last week, I received
- a large ball of gardening twine;
- a clever secateurs/penknife/trowel combo;
- a new pair of gardening gloves;
- a subscription to Compost World ;
- a Bugatti Veyron;
- lots and lots of packets of seeds.
(Okay, I was joking about Compost World). So, what with the recent spell of warm weather in which temperatures in North Norfolk remained above freezing for several whole minutes together, I set about sowing seeds, potting on a few houseplants that had outgrown their confines, and generally getting into the Gardening Zone after a long absence.
I think that what I like most about gardening is the amazing propensity of living things to grow. That tiny things like these – each no larger than the nail on your little finger – can, in a few short weeks, and with only minimal encouragement, turn into behemoths like this. I know it sounds obvious, but it’s not until you do a bit of gardening that this burgeoning productivity comes home to you in a visceral way.
What’s more, each type of seed is different – the smooth, almond-shaped seeds of pumpkins, for example, look quite different from the rough and knobbly seeds of nasturtiums, which look, to my eyes, like particles from a brand of breakfast cereal that never got into the shops for fear of scaring people in that critical state in which humans collide with the most important meal of the day.
Now, here’s the important part, so listen up. Each kind of seed grows, reliably, into its own kind of plant. Cucumbers always come from cucumber seeds, and onion seeds always turn into onions (unless the slugs get to them before I do). Isn’t that completely amazing?
Yes, I know we know all there is to know about photosynthesis, and metabolism, and cell division, and genomes, and all that stuff. But there’s something about the act of gardening that catapults me back to the simple wonderment of our ancestors at the bald fact of growth, and that each kind of plant remains true, more or less, to its kind. I can quite understand how religions got started – when it comes down to it, religions are generally rooted in fertility festivals, and superstitions connected with the seasons and the round of the farming year.
As for plants, so too for animals. When confronted with the imminent prospect of fatherhood, slightly more than a decade ago, I was set to wondering how it was that in fewer than 28 days, an apparently featureless fertilized egg turns into something that’s no larger than a pea, but otherwise recognizable as a human being. From this experience grew a book called Jacob’s Ladder in which I argued that the enterprise of the Human Genome Project grew out of this same, simple wonder- the wonder that drove Aristotle, Harvey, Goethe, Darwin and many others, right up to Watson and Crick and to the present day. The wonder of what agency it is that creates something as complex and well-formed as a plant, or a human being, from an apparently formless speck – and does so, time after time.
Gardening is science in the raw; science, green in tooth and claw.
Last year I sowed climbing nasturtiums to grow up the front of my house, thinking they were annuals. A rousing success. But not only didn’t the green vines die back over the winter – they’ve just this week set flowers again. Is the term ‘annual’ meaningless in a climate like London’s?
(I sound like one of those old biddies on ‘Gardener’s Question Time’. This is your cue to tell me to go after aphids with Fairy Liquid or something.)
My thumbs are not very green at all. In fact the garden is in such a state that the lawn is now referred to as the biodiversity project. However I did manage to grow peas and courgettes last year.
Don’t know about your nasturtiums Jenny, but I’m having the devil of a time growing chillis in Sydney. They germinate, then do nothing until they’ve had ‘winter’ (which in Sydney means the maximum daily temp might dip below 15C and the minimum might hit single figures) and then they turn into woody-stemmed trees. And fruit all year round.
It’s very odd.
Oh, and Henry, I’m coming to London in August if only for a spin in your Bugatti.
This will probably show my age, but I grew up listening to Gardener’s Question Time when the panellists included horny-handed old rustics with names like Bill Sowerbutts and Fred Loads, counterpointed with the posh-sounding voice of A Scientist in the form of Professor Alan Gemmell (I almost wrote ‘Gemmule’, there) of Keele University.
Back then advice consisted mostly of dark warnings, signs, portents and slathering everything with evil-sounding concoctions with ominous names like ‘Bordeaux Mixture’ and ‘Stockholm Tar’. Decades later I am now that horny-handed old rustic. I even have a pot of Bordeaux Mixture in my shed, though I’ve never yet encountered Stockholm Tar. I draw the line at Wool of Bat, though, for obvious health and safety reasons. For a start, it’s bloody hard to get the wool off a bat. The little blighters bite. Therefore, please read the following with a cod-rustic accent cf. Hagrid in Harry Potter.
@Jenny: Nasturtiums, they be biennials, innit?
@Cath: Keep it up. Any fool can grow more courgettes than you need, but peas can be tricky little varmints, so you’re doin’ summat right.
@Richard: That’s called vernalization, that is, and no, you can’t have a go of my Bugatti. Not while I’ve still got the harrowing attachment hooked up to it.
Richard – you either have to put your chillies in the fridge for a couple of months, or christen them all Vernon.
I can’t do a great deal of gardening, as I live on the eighth floor. I could have some plants on the balcony, but my acrophobia prevents that. I do have a banana plant and a couple of others indoors though. The beast has used the yucca to demonstrate that he can be a vegetarian if I don’t give him the right food.
I wrote a short story once which had the best rejection letter I’ve ever had, from a US SF magazine.
“It is editorial policy,” it said, “not to publish stories written from the viewpoint of a nasturtium.” Beat that, Nature editors.
(Ooh, Nature – growing things – it all sort of fits together, doesn’t it? Spooky synchronicity.)
I definitely can’t beat that, Brian – the best one I saw was by the then-Commentary editor in response to a particularly egregious submission:
Dear Dr Nasturtium
Thank you for your manuscript. Sadly, it is not our cup of tea.
Yours sincerely
etc
But Henry had a nice example of an editor’s letter to one Dr Gadhaffi about a Dr Trellis—lost in the mists of the network, probably, so won’t attempt to link, as Henry has probably tagged it “I would like a compost magazine for my birthday” or something like that, rather than “lethal requests” or “terminator
technhologycontracts”.I want to see the acceptance letter that goes
I am always looking out for new ways to write letters, so your comments have been read and noted.
@Maxine – the letter you require is here but I did come up with an even more
egregiousridiculous example which you can find here.@Brian – I’d willingly consider your story about nasturtiums for the Futures section – or even Mallorn, given that Tolkien was fond of nasturtiums, though he, no doubt for sound etymological reasons, called them nasturtians.
Anyone want to buy some magic beans? I’d consider trading them for a Buggati, say.
Not unless you can spell ‘Bugatti’ better than I can spell ‘girrafe’.
Just got in from planting out next years broccoli, weeding the asparagus bed, repairing the fruit cage and putting up fencing to stop the chickens getting into next doors garden…AGAIN. So I’m a little late to this thread;
gardening is science in the raw
I completely agree with that; and compost making is microbiology. I used to make dreadful compost. Butyric to say the least but then I started treating it as an experiment in maintaining a culture and now it is great.
One of the books that I will never write takes the science and gardening connection to its logical extreme: molecular biology explained through gardening. Vernalisation has a chapter all to itself.
Question: What’s the difference between compost and folk music?
Answer: Compost is a living culture.
However, what I really wanted to share was a rejection letter I came across in an interview with the comic scribe Rob Williams in Judge Dredd Maegazine , which I was reading only last night. It was for one of his early story pitches to 2000AD in about, well 2000 AD actually.
Dear Rob,
Congratulations! You have pitched the most unoriginal story idea that we have ever received for 2000AD. In fact we first published the story in 1977.
The editor had even bothered to photocopy the 23 year old precedent and include it.
I should like everyone to know that when Chris Surridge was at Nature, he was my gardening guru. So please direct all gardening-related questions to him. Thank you.