[Roving Episode] Hop Poles and Wild Garlic: A Hampshire Hangers Walk
On this episode of Dear Gardener, Ben Dark takes us on a journey through the wooded Hampshire Hangers, discussing plants and history along the way. Passing cowslips, wild garlic, incongruous copper beech, and wildly inappropriate bamboo, Ben shares his love-hate relationship with these plants and how they fit in the changing English countryside. Our host also delves into the writing of William Cobbet and his critical commentary on the landscape while relating his own experiences with managing meadows and creating a space for both people and wildlife. Tune in to learn more about the beauty and challenges of gardening.
https://ko-fi.com/bendark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9cs657k9Q4
Episode breakdown:
[00:00:06] Podcast discusses the potential reason behind gardeners' dislike of the colour orange, possibly due to its association with plant blight.
[00:05:42] The English countryside is going through significant change as ash trees are being lost, allowing new plants and vistas to emerge. This is similar to the aftermath of the great storm of 87, which led to a boom in gardening as people were freed up to create something new.
[00:09:50] William Cobbet as inspiration for J. C. Louden. Weather and its importance to nature writers
[00:11:19] Forest floor covered in wild garlic due to deer agitating it in the dawn
[00:14:49] Trees grow conjoined with roots exposed.
[00:18:13] Dan Pearson's newsletter Dig Delve and artisanal tulip bulbs
[00:21:24] Eric Newby's wife and her drunken suitors.
[00:26:05] Description of a house with symmetrical plantings including a native white beam tree and a fantastically shaggy bamboo.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to another episode of Dear Gardener.
Speaker:You join me in the woods again today,
Speaker:this time in the Hampshire hangars.
Speaker:Was reading House and Garden magazine yesterday,
Speaker:I think it was their latest one, and they have a special
Speaker:from Badminton House,
Speaker:that great grand garden, and it was all about the tulips
Speaker:there. But some of the things they were showing were the
Speaker:little box hedges around the south
Speaker:terrace, very formally clipped with white tulips in the middle,
Speaker:and they look beautiful until in the corner
Speaker:of the picture you see the tiniest, tiniest hint of
Speaker:blight and it's this orange color. And suddenly, for me at least,
Speaker:the whole scene is ruined. I was wondering to myself
Speaker:whether that could be some sort of reason behind
Speaker:the well to do gardeners, the smart gardeners notorious
Speaker:dislike of the color orange. It subconsciously reminds
Speaker:them of boxplight, of death, of the expense of
Speaker:ripping up a new hedge and having to think about things like youonymous.
Speaker:Up here I can see good trunks
Speaker:with a nice bit of fluting on them,
Speaker:something you'd find on a very, very, very well done
Speaker:Gothic pillar. And look at that. I'm seeing before me
Speaker:a stand of you going high, high up into the air and sending
Speaker:off great big sideways branches into the sloping forest
Speaker:below. Were you to come here and see that
Speaker:as an alien landed on Earth for the first time and told,
Speaker:choose some plants for a stately garden,
Speaker:choose some plants for the Chelsea Flower show, you wouldn't pick this.
Speaker:You would think, I'll keep that thing well away from my little
Speaker:fussy designs. Here's the view I wanted to show before I got distracted
Speaker:by that new plant and the dangers of orange
Speaker:at Badminton House. House and Gardens magazine
Speaker:is great, by the way. It contains all sorts of fantastically
Speaker:unrelatable lines, like, the boot room
Speaker:really is the engine of the country house. Boot rooms
Speaker:have a particularly important status in
Speaker:British cultural life and snobbery. It's kind of
Speaker:a justification for being in the countryside. You can say, I've got a
Speaker:boot room. It means that I'm here for dogs and children
Speaker:and rambunctious fun. I am a true enjoyer
Speaker:of the countryside and a part of it because it is on me and on
Speaker:my boots. So you probably hear more talk
Speaker:in the smart set in the country about boot rooms than any other
Speaker:room. Interesting, isn't it? I suppose it's an equivalent of hanging
Speaker:your awards in the downstairs loo. It's a way of boasting about
Speaker:incredible wealth while still talking
Speaker:about the quotidian and the mundane. I've come
Speaker:out now to the most fantastic view on shoulder of Mutton Hill.
Speaker:Here we see off the side of the hangars,
Speaker:down to some grand houses.
Speaker:There's a copper beach planted slap in the
Speaker:middle of the landscape. It's a fantastic piece of showmanship
Speaker:planting. It says, I know this is
Speaker:the premier view spot, probably for
Speaker:100 miles in every direction, the most beautiful and celebrated
Speaker:view. And I shall put a vast copper beach,
Speaker:perfectly, perfectly central in the middle of it
Speaker:for everyone and all to see. Copper beach I have a funny
Speaker:relationship with absolutely loathe it.
Speaker:When planted in a hedge, it seems to suck the light
Speaker:out of a roadscape and turn it into something
Speaker:rather dark and tedious, same as planting the dark
Speaker:leaf cherries in towns. But then when you see it somewhere
Speaker:completely artificial and grown to a huge height, like in
Speaker:an arboretum, then you see its value
Speaker:as something to jerk the viewer out of their out
Speaker:of their apathy and their oh, there's another oak, there's another beach.
Speaker:Some things very unlike oak and beach here just come out onto
Speaker:this little bit of very
Speaker:steeply sloping, but obviously quite sharply drained hillside.
Speaker:And there are so many little cow slips and
Speaker:a juga reapens the sorry reptins,
Speaker:the common little creeping bugle, carpet bugle,
Speaker:making quite a nice show together. It's old
Speaker:hack, isn't it? Doing purple and yellow,
Speaker:but it does work. Then there's vast amounts of little
Speaker:roses, little roses growing in the soil,
Speaker:little wild rose. None of them have got particularly big, so this must get
Speaker:heavily grazed by rabbits. I'd get come
Speaker:out here, hop out from these brambly sidings that surround
Speaker:me and take those roses off later on.
Speaker:Going to carry on striding up there. It's a big,
Speaker:big dead ash up there. We are in a
Speaker:period of intense change in the English
Speaker:countryside. In some ways it's very, very exciting because we are going to
Speaker:lose these ash trees that have been so important in
Speaker:the landscape for so long. And now
Speaker:we find ourselves at the bit where everyone else,
Speaker:all of these things here, all of this maple clematis,
Speaker:u, white beam sticking out of the side of the woodlands,
Speaker:is going to rush to fill their place.
Speaker:There will be battles fought over the ash groves
Speaker:and also we will see views that have
Speaker:been hidden for decades. Whole hillsides
Speaker:to my left falling away, giving vistas
Speaker:unknown that will soon be swallowed up. It's a bit like after
Speaker:the great storm of 87,
Speaker:when there was something of a boom
Speaker:in great gardens and gardening, because those
Speaker:stayed plants, those things that people had relied
Speaker:on, the oak that framed the view,
Speaker:they were all demolished literally overnight.
Speaker:And people were able to think again, people didn't
Speaker:want have to worry about, well, I inherited this garden
Speaker:and this boot room from Great Uncle
Speaker:Toby, and he inherited it from his Great uncle
Speaker:Toby and so on and so on and so on, until everyone was called
Speaker:James and they stole the land from us.
Speaker:And anyway, now they were freed up to go
Speaker:and do something new, do something fresh in
Speaker:their gardens. Maybe ash would do something like that. I found
Speaker:it particularly pity because it's such a good shape
Speaker:in winter, it branches nicely and it leads to
Speaker:exciting silhouettes. And now it's
Speaker:gone. Very good time, though, to be a saprophytic
Speaker:beetle, a beetle who likes to get in
Speaker:there and eat some rotting wood.
Speaker:Be a good few decades for mushroom
Speaker:hunters as well. There's another little woodlander
Speaker:here. Up here. This is Euphorbia little wood
Speaker:Spudge. Euphorbia amagadilloides, I believe.
Speaker:One of those things where they think, why did you put a GD
Speaker:next to each other in your binomial?
Speaker:What was that for? To trip up us gardening
Speaker:podcasters. Euphorbia Amagaloidis I
Speaker:think that's right. Anyway, now up higher into the woodlands
Speaker:and the first beach just
Speaker:climbed to the top of shoulder of Mutton Hill. Now it's
Speaker:some climb walking along Cobbt's way to to
Speaker:Cobbt's View, which is perhaps
Speaker:the most famous view in these part of the hangars. I don't think we're
Speaker:going to go and see it. It's the one where William Cobbt, in that
Speaker:Rural Rides passage, looks out over Hawkly and
Speaker:is moved by the splendor of it all. I read
Speaker:quite a lot of Cobbt start of this year. He's a really
Speaker:strong influence, I think, on J. C.
Speaker:Loudon. J. C. Loudon famous gardening
Speaker:publisher and gardener himself later on, who imitated
Speaker:Cobbt in being a very,
Speaker:very aggressive, self promoting pamphleteer.
Speaker:They were both almost self publishers and they both went out
Speaker:and did this Rural Rides reporting, where they
Speaker:would take to horseback, sometimes coach and
Speaker:tour the countryside. Loudon visiting Great Gardens,
Speaker:where he was incredibly keen on
Speaker:giving out paternalistic advice to young gardeners.
Speaker:If he found someone sober, upright and well shaved,
Speaker:he would give him an improving volume of something or
Speaker:other. And for all that,
Speaker:for all of his concern with aesthetics, you don't really
Speaker:get much critical commentary on
Speaker:the gardens he goes through, whereas Cobbt will comment amongst
Speaker:all of the disparaging remarks about the roughness
Speaker:of the local dress, about the state
Speaker:of the poor people generally caused by their landlords.
Speaker:In Cobbt's case, he will talk about the
Speaker:subliminity of nature, and particularly in the passage
Speaker:where he overlooks Hawkly. We are
Speaker:constantly teasing ourselves for always starting
Speaker:any conversation with the weather, but you realize from
Speaker:reading these things that of course you did, that of course you did.
Speaker:You didn't know to pack your great coat or to pack your silky
Speaker:little stockings, which I'm sure Cobbt wore, unless you talk to
Speaker:local farmers who would tell you, or you think they'll go
Speaker:from in from there and invariably be wrong and mislead you.
Speaker:And you'd get it to your coaching in late at night,
Speaker:soak through and take to bed. This is muddy country, as Cobbitt
Speaker:would tell you. There's lots of pockets of clay,
Speaker:not like the South Downs below.
Speaker:I'm going to stumble off down this path down here,
Speaker:vast banks of wild garlic. I came up here early this
Speaker:morning. I was in the hills by 07:00, a bit
Speaker:before and you couldn't really smell anything. But the day is
Speaker:warming up out there. And now there is the most fantastic garlicky
Speaker:smell. All of the deer who've been trotting around here, I've been seeing little deer
Speaker:paths. All of those deer have been agitating it
Speaker:in the night, releasing some compounds, is passing a view
Speaker:that would not have been here five years ago, wouldn't have been here two years
Speaker:ago. A view out to a little farmhouse through the
Speaker:dead stems of ash trees, the forest
Speaker:floor below completely covered in wild
Speaker:garlic, which might well be the result of that
Speaker:divock anyway. My gardening this week has
Speaker:been of the lawn type. I've been mowing
Speaker:the meadow and I have been
Speaker:attempting to make a usable space again.
Speaker:I love meadows, but I do think gardens are people
Speaker:places as well as wildlife places,
Speaker:and there needs to be paths through them. And also seating
Speaker:areas. And around those seating areas, little circles,
Speaker:little crop circles where a child can
Speaker:play.
Speaker:Lots of yellow rattle. The Rhinanthus
Speaker:minor, it's hemi parasitic, as opposed to
Speaker:holoparasitic hemiparasitic, meaning that it can survive without
Speaker:parasitizing other plants for their nutrients. But it
Speaker:really prefers to and it sends
Speaker:out this wonderful organ,
Speaker:this root organ, into the surrounding plants
Speaker:to suck away their nutrient and thus reduces their vigor.
Speaker:It's not an obligate parasite of grass. In fact, I don't think it even
Speaker:favors grass. It likes to take
Speaker:from as many host species as possible,
Speaker:so maybe it'll take some carbohydrate vigor from
Speaker:a really good bit of grass. But then you've also got
Speaker:the leguminous plants, the clovers,
Speaker:the nitrogen fixers that it can
Speaker:wrinkle into as well. And then you get nitrogen,
Speaker:which isn't freely available in the soil. And it's
Speaker:been shown that some plants, I think they can be sucking
Speaker:from at least seven different species at once.
Speaker:That's quite a varied diet. I think doctors would approve of that.
Speaker:They don't go for annuals. What's the point? There isn't the density of nutrients
Speaker:in an annual's root. Why would an annual be storing nutrients in its root?
Speaker:It's not coming back again. It's all about that one summer. So they
Speaker:go for perennial plants and they just weaken the whole
Speaker:perennial patch that they're in, allowing more chance
Speaker:for things to come in more wind blown
Speaker:annuals or rarer small seeded things like
Speaker:the orchids passing the most amazing conjoined
Speaker:beech trees here. Their roots really are meshed.
Speaker:We're in a sunken lane and the soil has
Speaker:shifted over time, shifted from these
Speaker:plants. Soil shift is actually quite a
Speaker:common phenomenon. Hills this steep, it tends to move
Speaker:away from plants and leave them with their roots exposed. But here
Speaker:you can see that trees, probably 15ft
Speaker:apart, are completely conjoined. The roots
Speaker:are here, about six
Speaker:foot away from the ground. It's a very impressive
Speaker:effect. Were you a sort of Toby? Toby descendant
Speaker:of James and James? You could plant
Speaker:for this plant on a sandy mound and just
Speaker:make her a praviso in your will.
Speaker:That along with taking all of his eldest sister's
Speaker:land, your son has to wash away a little bit of the roots.
Speaker:And each year if everyone does the same thing, then eventually you'd have
Speaker:great big Tripid trees standing on
Speaker:elevated stumps. Be quite an amusing effect.
Speaker:You probably do something like that. Well, you probably could have done something like
Speaker:that for the Chelsea flower shape. Show the roots off on a
Speaker:tree, go and go and jet wash it all out. You only have to keep
Speaker:it alive for a week. But you're not allowed to kill things at Chelsea
Speaker:anymore. It all has to be completely reused
Speaker:and carted off onto another worthy
Speaker:site.
Speaker:Anyway, I hope you're enjoying these
Speaker:solo podcasts and Out On the Road podcasts.
Speaker:I did and do mean to create
Speaker:more of those mashup episodes. It's just that everyone's so mean about
Speaker:them. All my reviews starting off saying,
Speaker:I'm sorry, Ben, but one star, I don't
Speaker:know why. I think they're fantastic. I think they're a new direction in audio
Speaker:and one day they will be heralded as such. Just out now,
Speaker:popped from the path onto a tiny bit of road. I'm only going to be
Speaker:on a second and it's amazing. Suddenly you see, AHA, someone must
Speaker:live here. There's horse chestnuts about, there's ornamental planting.
Speaker:There's even an orchard. There's an orchard through this hedge.
Speaker:Little apple tree orchard looking rather pleasant.
Speaker:Quite a lot of tip bearing species in there, just doing the last
Speaker:of their flowering. Very gorgeous to see. This is quite
Speaker:a traditional hop growing area.
Speaker:Sadly no longer, but it used to be lots of hops
Speaker:and oath houses around here. So you get those exciting
Speaker:pointy buildings and there are relics
Speaker:of it in the landscape. You see the shelter belts
Speaker:of poplars planted, aging out
Speaker:now and falling apart as, as poplars do. But they were planted
Speaker:there to stop the wind from pulling
Speaker:at the hop poles and bashing them around.
Speaker:Hop itself doesn't matter. Hop hop doesn't mind being knocked on
Speaker:the floor and starting growing again. But if you've constructed
Speaker:a wonderful hop yard and it all gets knocked down by a summer
Speaker:school or autumn school, then you get a bit upset. So you plant your poplars
Speaker:and you protect your fields. You do still see
Speaker:it occasionally growing in the hedges
Speaker:around here. Lots and lots of hazel, lots of hazel
Speaker:for the poles. Lots of coppice hazel now grown out and
Speaker:unmanaged. Those woodlands that I was in earlier are
Speaker:pretty unproductive, apart from taking poles
Speaker:from so probably taking poles of you and poles of
Speaker:hazel and other understory trees
Speaker:that are allowed to be managed. This is hop just walking
Speaker:past. Some hop now, growing vigorously
Speaker:through some elder and a young hazel. So there is the relic,
Speaker:there is a relic of ancient industry still remaining
Speaker:here. Someone could come and do an artisan
Speaker:hop field here. I think that would go down very well in our
Speaker:world of artisanal stuff.
Speaker:I was listening to what I was reading, actually a
Speaker:very good newsletter by Dan Pearson,
Speaker:brilliant designer, and he writes
Speaker:a newsletter called Dig Delve, which is less about less
Speaker:about design, more about plants. And in it this week,
Speaker:he was calling attention to the damage
Speaker:done by Dutch factory horticulture
Speaker:to Tulips. They're all treated with
Speaker:sulfides and chemicals and insecticides and fungicides
Speaker:and then sent out. And he made the reasonable point that
Speaker:those of us who like to take the organic choice
Speaker:don't make a second glance at an organic bulb. I hadn't really
Speaker:even thought they existed, but of course they do. And he's been buying them for
Speaker:about twice the price. It must be said as normal.
Speaker:Bobs and I think I ought to do the same thing. But anyway,
Speaker:the reason I started talking about that artisanal nature
Speaker:of the things I'm sorry, I'm being a bit truncated here because I'm shuffling over
Speaker:a bog. There's an incredibly wet bit. This bit has
Speaker:had a lot of clay soot washed into it and
Speaker:we are boggy. Anyway, that's a diversion from a diversion.
Speaker:The artisanal thing. There was an advert, It's farmer
Speaker:Gracie, who sponsored a lot of gardening podcasts. And when I was listening
Speaker:to, there was a host reading and saying, bulbs lovingly
Speaker:produced from the heart of the tulip growing area of Holland.
Speaker:And you think, well, all it needs is someone to stop for a second and
Speaker:say, like, I don't want bulbs from the heart of the Tulip area growing in
Speaker:Holland. Tulip area in Holland is horrible. It's completely polluted
Speaker:by vast amount of aggro chemicals from the heart of
Speaker:the Tulip area in Holland means from a field amongst a
Speaker:thousand field all drenched in tractor
Speaker:spray residue. I'm just as susceptible as everyone else.
Speaker:We don't think that as soon as we hear a geographic specificator
Speaker:on the product, we think, oh,
Speaker:gosh, lovely. It must have been produced by a lovely
Speaker:young yokel. Or even better, an old yokel. An old
Speaker:yokel with all the power of tradition in his
Speaker:horny hands. As reading last
Speaker:night, Eric Newby. I don't think we ever read Eric Newby anymore.
Speaker:The travel writer, and he's married to an Italian.
Speaker:I was reading his Journey Around the Mediterranean, the great bit about his
Speaker:Italian wife. They still go back to the agricultural festival
Speaker:every year and his wife does
Speaker:a couple of days work in a local hotel. Still, just tradition to
Speaker:help out. And every year, inevitably, some widowed
Speaker:farmer in his 50s proposes marriage
Speaker:to a wife after drinking 14 glasses of
Speaker:cheap, locally made wine. But I guess that doesn't happen anymore.
Speaker:I guess that widowed farmers in their 50s
Speaker:in the north of Tuscany just go on to
Speaker:go on to the apps like everyone else. Start specifying
Speaker:required hip ratios.
Speaker:Chestnut trees. Peering in the landscape again.
Speaker:Human dwelling. Be close.
Speaker:This has felt the hand of man, I should say.
Speaker:There is now a oh, yes. And look, a vast copper beach.
Speaker:A vast copper beach peeking over the hedger over there. I should say
Speaker:that this podcast now has a video component.
Speaker:I have a little camera with me recording as
Speaker:I wander. So if you want to see some of
Speaker:the things that I've been talking about as I say them, you can do
Speaker:that. You can go to YouTube. Probably to dear
Speaker:Gardener TV. That's why I'm planning to put it. But don't know
Speaker:if that's available or not. It will be there. If not,
Speaker:then it'll be somewhere linked below this episode.
Speaker:Just to see a very gentle video of
Speaker:the things that I've been walking past. A few other
Speaker:bits of podcast homework, I'm afraid.
Speaker:We really need to get rid of those one star. I'm sorry, Ben, but not
Speaker:for me reviews. So if anyone wants to leave a review,
Speaker:your reviews would be really greatly
Speaker:appreciated. And as always, the podcast
Speaker:can be supported at COFI. That's K-O-F-I
Speaker:combendark that
Speaker:address does exist and will help
Speaker:me to pay for hosting and other things like that.
Speaker:Plus a really nice patch of lammium there.
Speaker:Really gorgeous. What a woodland wonder.
Speaker:Another member of the Mint family. Like that juga
Speaker:reptins we were seeing way back at the beginning.
Speaker:This is cultivated back into the comfortable world of gardening.
Speaker:Nice fox club. Very, very subtly done. It's a gorgeous,
Speaker:gorgeous part of this world. This part of the world,
Speaker:rather. I wish that I could spend more
Speaker:time here. It's the hills and the gullies
Speaker:living in Copenhagen. Beautiful though it
Speaker:is, it has not that variation
Speaker:in topography anyway. Is it beautiful? It is.
Speaker:The people are beautiful, culture is beautiful. Here we go.
Speaker:Look at that. The weird otherworldly influence
Speaker:of the vast copper beach showing that there
Speaker:is a stately manor around somewhere.
Speaker:Someone with an ambition for
Speaker:an arboretum. Yes. Other than that,
Speaker:obviously. Go and buy the book and
Speaker:see my thoughts in written down form and
Speaker:get out and enjoy the countryside around you. See what
Speaker:you can find. It really is quite
Speaker:fun to do those little bits of detective work.
Speaker:You don't have to just do it on the city street, as I did in
Speaker:the book. You can do it in the countryside and try and find try and
Speaker:find the relics and the future direction. Because we
Speaker:can't step in the same stream twice,
Speaker:as they always say. We can't walk the same walk twice. This will
Speaker:change seasonally, but also as the
Speaker:climate changes, as the fungal diseases take things
Speaker:out. Oh, look, here we shift from wild
Speaker:garlic to cow parsley. The froth,
Speaker:the light and airy cow parsley gone.
Speaker:Gone from the dark into the light. Oh, my goodness.
Speaker:Just passing a grand entry to a house.
Speaker:And it's got symmetrical plantings on either side of a gate
Speaker:and a drive running between Cobb Beach. And one
Speaker:of the plantings is a very nice native sorbet white
Speaker:beam, as we found in the U forest. And the other one is the most
Speaker:grand and hairy old trolls.
Speaker:Mop of bamboo. A clump former,
Speaker:but gone completely wild, gone out of control.
Speaker:Someone's old Uncle Toby, maybe two Toby's
Speaker:ago, didn't follow the rules,
Speaker:didn't plant plant the washing out trees that we were going
Speaker:to take to Chelsea and planted a little bit of bamboo by their driveway
Speaker:instead. And now look what's happened. It's a very nice bench here.
Speaker:Takes me back to what I was saying about importance of seating in
Speaker:the meadow. How lovely to sit on that bench,
Speaker:put on an episode of Dear Gardener,
Speaker:let the world drift on by, with which I
Speaker:will drift back on by. I'm going to come up this hill.
Speaker:The pub at the top won't be open yet, but I will sit
Speaker:around. Maybe maybe I'll wait for opening. Is this
Speaker:a day's work? Is this a morning's work? I think so.
Speaker:Go and have a pint. Thank you very, very much for listening. And I'll
Speaker:be back again next week with with another episode
