A History of Gardening in 50 Objects E-Book

George Drower

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 300

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The earliest record of an enclosed space around a homestead come from 10,000 BC and since then gardens of varying types and ambition have been popular throughout the ages. Whether ornamental patches surrounding wild cottages, container gardens blooming over unforgiving concrete or those turned over for growing produce, gardens exist in all shapes and sizes, in all manner of styles. Today we benefit from centuries of development, be it in the cultivation of desirable blossom or larger fruits, in the technology to keep weeds and lawn at bay or even in the visionaries who tore up rulebooks and cultivated pure creativity in their green spaces. George Drower takes fifty objects that have helped create the gardening scene we know today and explores the history outside spaces in a truly unique fashion. With stunning botanical and archive images, this lavish volume is essential for garden lovers.

Leseprobe

A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN 50 OBJECTS

First published as Gardeners, Gurus & Grubs: The Stories of Garden Inventors and Innovations, 2001

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© George Drower, 2001, 2019

The right of George Drower to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9188 9

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Turkey by Imak

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 Tools of the Trade

2 Plant Finders

3 Water Features

4 Growing Exotics

5 Lawns

6 Supports, Climbers and Hedges

7 Fertilisers and Pest Controls

8 Garden Writings

9 Gardening Movements

10 Nurseries

11 Containers

Further Reading

Image Credits

INTRODUCTION

SINCE ANCIENT TIMES, when the earliest gardens were created, through the ages, enclosed spaces around homesteads have evolved into a diversity of forms. They have ranged from ornamental patches to informal wild cottage surrounds, from noblemen’s country house estates to urban gardens, and from allotment plots to simple plant containers. We have all become beneficiaries of centuries of horticultural developments, be it in the form of techniques, such as cultivation of blossoms and large fruits; technologies, like weed control and lawn-cutting devices; the efforts of entrepreneurs who introduced maintenance tools and even garden sports; and the ideas of visionaries who tore up rulebooks and created idyllic spaces.

An advantage of viewing gardening’s hundreds of years of history from a perspective of fifty objects is that the term ‘objects’ usefully covers all the relevant horticultural elements: living forms, such as inventors, plants, trees, shrubs, fruits and vegetables; shapes of garden and structural features; and ideas, methods, techniques and written works. There are objects which were synonymous with, and characteristic of, distinct historical eras: flowerpots first appeared in the Land of the Pharaohs; ancient Rome had lawns and trellises; in Renaissance times there were orangeries and sprinklers; eighteenth-century landscape gardens were supplied with trees and shrubs by mail-order nurseries; ‘picturesque’ plots were trimmed with secateurs; ‘gardenesque’ green spaces had hosepipes and rhododendrons; and in suburban twentieth-century gardens there was enjoyment to be had from fibreglass ponds and flame-guns.

This approach to the stories of gardening in terms of objects, interestingly, brings to light the occurrence of wider historical patterns and themes. Some of the most familiar components of gardens are essentially adaptations from other disciplines: the simple wheelbarrow is a distant development of an ancient Chinese device used for transporting military supplies; the Flymo is an evolution of the passenger-carrying hovercraft; the first cylindrical lawnmower’s design derived from a factory-based wool machine; and even the monster leylandii tree is a form of adaptation, albeit an accidental natural one, originating from North American trees which happened to be in Britain in 1888.

For centuries gardening has brought attention to environmental issues that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. In his 1725 treatise on gardening practices, Richard Bradley noted how, as early as Roman times, Columella had reported cultivatable soils being overworked. When doing his dazzling folio illustrations for eighteenth-century garden owners, Mark Catesby recorded the near extinction of brasiletta trees in the Bahamas and native pigeons in North America. John Bartram’s Philadelphia nursery spared the native Frankinia tree from disappearing. One of many consequences of Eve Balfour’s inspirational 1943 publication The Living Planet, and the subsequent creation of the Soil Association, was that amateur horticulturalists applied those concerns about healthy vegetables and the overuse of chemicals to their own gardens.

Certain garden objects have unwittingly been a factor in the causing of environmental damage. In the process of making John Bennet Lawes’ superphosphate fertiliser, the sulphuric acid used in its manufacture ruined the health of those who lived near his Deptford factory. Flame-guns needlessly killed insects and polluted the air with toxic fumes. A consequence of baled peat compost, and Gro-bags for balconies, was excavation damage to large areas of bird-nesting wetlands. The good-natured Dr Nathaniel Ward could not have envisaged that his ‘Wardian cases’ – by stimulating a Victorian craze for ferns to go in similar terrariums – were going to cause such excessive fern gathering that it would threaten endangered species of fern in Scotland.

Wardian cases were raffishly used by Robert Fortune to smuggle 20,000 tea-plant seedlings from China and thereby start India’s tea industry. There were other objects in the gardening world associated with nefarious conduct. William Forsyth’s magic plaster for reviving trees was unmasked as a fraud. The Marquis de Chabannes’s invention of a revolutionary greenhouse heating system seems to have been borrowed without permission from a Parisian physician. Even the first live pineapple in England, celebrated in 1661 with an oil painting as having been grown by King Charles II’s gardener, was that year observed by John Evelyn to have been imported potted from the Caribbean.

These fifty stories of how and why objects were devised are arranged according to subject in the book’s eleven sections. Gardening objects being readily synonymous with horticultural equipment, the book opens with ‘Tools of the Trade’, which shows how particular implements were ingeniously devised by adaptation. The next section, ‘Plant Finders’, considers how – by audacity and initiative – intrepid explorers such as Ernest Henry ‘Chinese’ Wilson brought their discoveries to the public. The ‘Water Features’ section shows how the development of aquatic features, since ancient Greek times, has brought merriment to gardens. Ambitions for prestige are found to be motivating factors for ‘Growing Exotics’ in challenging circumstances. The objects relevant to ‘Lawns’ are notably derived from other ideas and contraptions. The objects in ‘Supports, Climbers and Hedges’ were, in various forms, imported from overseas – sometimes controversially. The ‘Fertilisers and Pest Controls’ section considers the ingeniously practical objects that eradicated garden nuisances and improved soil conditions. ‘Garden Writings’ considers the horticultural authors who used their literary works to make their recommendations more influential. Some of the objects in ‘Gardening Movements’ were entertaining crazes, others – such as Titus Salt’s allotments – were remarkably altruistic. The penultimate section considers some distinguished garden ‘Nurseries’ that supplied the buying public with learned advice and specialist ranges of plants. The development of ‘Containers’ – particularly in urban locations – has long enabled millions to enjoy forms of gardening of their own.

SEVERAL OF THESE TOOLS for creating and maintaining gardens were ingenious adaptations of devices intended for other purposes, and some were innovated by persons with remarkably distinguished origins. Secateurs were invented by the Marquis de Moleville, a French aristocrat in search of safer means of pruning vines than existing knifes and billhooks. Having intended them to be used by vineyard workers, when they went into production in 1818, de Moleville was surprised the new cutters were being adapted for use by gardeners who found them ideal for pruning hybrid roses.

The original wheelbarrow was devised in AD 231 by Chuko Liang, the prime minister of a Chinese kingdom, for the purpose of transporting military supplies over hilly terrain. The design having gone on to reach western Europe via the Byzantine Empire, the barrow was altered for use on medieval building sites, from where it evolved into being an indispensable tool for jobbing gardeners.

Ordered by the Earl of Harrington to rearrange the grounds at Elvaston Castle, in 1831 William Barron developed a more versatile tree-moving contraption than had been used by landscapers such as ‘Capability’ Brown and Andre Le Nôtre. Barron’s machine established how the appearance of gardens could reliably be changed instantly.

By adapting paper-making machinery George Acland was able to mass-produce sturdy green jute twine for supply to gardeners, who hitherto had needed to secure plants with hazel strips or raffia.

Better known for being modified into a weapon of war, the Swedish-invented flame-gun was an enjoyably haphazard means of putting down weeds, during an era prior to acceptance that gardens would be best kept organic.

1 CHUKO LIANG’S WHEELBARROW

THE SIMPLEST AND OLDEST of tools are invariably the most useful, and none more so than the wheelbarrow. Its inventor was Chuko Liang (AD 181–234), sometimes known as Zhuge Liang, who was prime minister of Shu and the author of several classical Chinese works on warfare and political strategy. One of the warring ‘Three Kingdoms’ formed during the fall of the Han Empire, Shu was a vast state located in western China. A great and ingenious general, the technically minded Chuko Liang grappled with the logistical problem of how to supply his armies in muddy soil conditions and hilly terrain, especially when there was a severe labour shortage. With some assistance from Li Zhuan, a naturalist and engineer with whom he had been improving the crossbow, Chuko Liang had the first wheelbarrows constructed. (It has been suggested that relief carvings on the Wu Liang tomb-shrines near Shandong, dated to AD 147, show a vehicle which could be a wheelbarrow, but the carvings are faded and the interpretation insecure.)

The newfangled prototype that trundled out of a workshop in AD 231 to shift army stores at a place called Jiangzhou was indeed a remarkable contraption. The wheel, which was very large in proportion to the barrow, was placed in the centre of the part on which the load was laid, so that all the weight bore upon the axle. The barrowman supported no part of the weight, but served merely to move the barrow forward, and keep it in equilibrium. The wheel was cased up in a frame made of laths, and covered over with a plank four or five inches wide. On each side of the barrow was a projection, on which the goods were balanced – rather like the pillions of a pack-horse. The wheel was at least a metre in diameter, with spokes which were slight and numerous. Its rim, which at first glance appeared to be unsuitably slender, was deliberately narrow: in the rainy season it would cut through boggy ground in which broader-rimmed wheels would stick fast. From this basic design Chuko Liang soon devised two simpler variants: the ‘Wooden Ox’, so-called because its shafts projected in front and it was pulled; and then the ‘Gliding Horse’ wheelbarrow, which was pushed.

Chuko Liang’s invention apparently reached western Europe via the Byzantine Empire where it was encountered by westerners during the Second Crusade. They took the idea back home and modified their existing handcarts to ride on one wheel only. The earliest known western depiction of a wheelbarrow appears in a stained-glass window at Chartres Cathedral, dated AD 1220. Initially barrows were much used for travelling long distances, such as moving goods across Alpine passes. However, later they were normally confined to short-haul work. Unlike the see-saw Chinese models, the medieval European types had the wheel placed well forward and were low-slung. Although more stable they had smaller cargo capacity.

Much of the garden wheelbarrow’s evolution took place on medieval building sites. Although the wheelbarrow was six times more expensive to buy than a two-wheeled handcart, only one labourer was required to push it. Effectively it could pay for itself within a week. And because one operative could now shift the load of two, the wheelbarrow was an absolute must for jobbing gardeners. Numerous barrow shapes developed. Gardeners had a choice of wooden or wrought-iron wheelbarrows. Some had sides, others a framework for holding pots and yet others only a stopper-board in front. Then there was the ‘haulm barrow’ (haulm meaning discarded plant stems) for carrying litter, leaves and prunings. Many of these low-slung models had a light carrying capacity, such as a basket for grass-cuttings. Also devised was the ‘separating barrow’, the body of which was secured by bolts, enabling it to be lifted off so that the load could be taken into hothouses where a whole barrow could not go. Chuko Liang’s brilliant invention – in its European form – appeared to have reached its apotheosis in the eighteenth century when a tree-carrying barrow was created.

Yet on the other side of the world, in the Chinese coastal province of Shantung, a visiting Dutch diplomat beheld an amazing innovation: sail-assisted wheelbarrows! In 1794 an astonished van Braam Houckgeest watched junk-rigged barrows moving overland. Rapidly sketching some illustrations in his journal he noted: ‘Each of them had a sail, mounted on a small mast in a socket arranged at the forward end of the barrow. The slat sail, made of matting, or more often of cloth, is five or six feet high, and three or four feet broad, with stays, sheets, and halyards, just as on a Chinese boat. The sheets join the shafts of the wheelbarrow and can thus be manipulated by the barrowman in charge.’ Just how many such ‘sail-barrows’ were used in large gardens is unknown. Surely Chuko Liang could never have envisaged that his simple invention would become so technically advanced.

2 BERTRAND DE MOLEVILLE’S SECATEURS

THE MAN WHO INVENTED every gardener’s most useful gadget, the secateurs, seldom if ever receives a mention, but on those rare occasions when he does, his name is almost certainly given as M. Bertrand of Moleville. In fact his full name was Antoine-François Bertrand de Moleville, and the initial ‘M’ stands not for a first name or Monsieur, but for Marquis. Why the Marquis de Moleville should have sought to invent secateurs is really quite a mystery, but he certainly made the invention in exciting circumstances.

Although de Moleville was a fairly prominent politician, surprisingly little is known about his personal life. An ardent supporter of King Louis XVI, de Moleville was Governor, and effectively the military commander, of Brittany. His monarchist stance made him a much-loathed figure, as he discovered in 1788 when he ventured forth from the fortress at Rennes to announce an edict – and was pelted with stones by a furious mob, who even threw a noose around his neck. Fleeing France in fear of his life in 1789 he became an émigré in Britain. In London he busied himself writing to a senior statesman, the Duke of Portland, offering to inform him of the best places for British forces to attack the Brittany coast. He wrote a book, Private Memoirs Relative to the Last Year of Louis XVI (1793), in support of the late king, then another in 1803 vituperatively condemning the author Helen Maria Williams for daring to criticise that royal dictator.

At the end of the Napoleonic period it seems de Moleville returned to France and, despite his earlier treasonable readiness to facilitate a British invasion, for a while held a ministerial post in the French government. Out of office again, this time he occupied himself inventing the secateurs, although by what means he produced and developed his prototype remains unknown. However, there was certainly a need to create such a gadget. For centuries the standard tools for pruning and vine-dressing had been the knife and billhook, both dangerous to use, especially if dropped from a height. De Moleville’s new ‘secateurs’ – the French word for cutters – had two curved blades. The edge of each was bevelled in opposite directions, so that the flat blades worked smoothly across each other. The blades were fastened together by a rivet, around which they turned. When not in use they were held together by a strap at the ends of the handles; when open, the blades were forced apart and held in that position by a spring between the handles.

By 1815 de Moleville had completed the basic design work, creating the famous cutters which were introduced to the public three years later. Initially he seems to have expected them to be used primarily by vineyard workers, although in 1818 the annual directory Le Bon Jardinier referred to them as the latest invention which might replace the pruning knife, so the makers were evidently already targeting them at gardeners. The timing was perfect. Secateurs proved particularly useful for the new rose hybrids. These, unlike their shrubby predecessors, required careful pruning to ensure blooming in subsequent years. William Robinson noted in his Gleanings from French Gardens: ‘A secateur is seen in the hands of every French fruit-grower, and by its means he cuts as clean as the best knife-man with the best knife ever whetted. They cut stakes with them also as fast as one could count them.’ Nevertheless in those early years the secateurs were not universally popular. They had many detractors, especially in Britain where for a long time gardeners regarded them as merely a woman’s accoutrement. (Indeed gardening magazines advertised them as such.) Soon there were various types of secateurs, with differing forms of blades, springs and handles. The most popular were the Lecointe, with a coiled spring; the Vauthier, with a notch for cutting wire (1864); the Aubert, with a single spring (1865); and then the anvil secateur.

The Marquis de Moleville escaped the guillotine in the French Revolution, and died knowing that he had established a means by which countless gardeners could in future protect their hands while pruning.

3 GEORGE ACLAND’S JUTE TWINE

BELOVED FOR ITS ORGANIC simplicity, an indispensable tool for every gardener’s pocket is a ball of twine, which – if it is green – will almost certainly be made of jute. It is taken for granted now, yet until 1828 there was no jute twine in Europe. Hitherto, gardeners who wanted to tie plants to a frame, or string up their runners, had to use hazel strips or raffia, which was of unreliable strength and not readily available in urban areas.

The founder of the jute manufacturing industry was Englishman George Acland, who began his nautical career as a midshipman in the Royal Navy and then served with the East India Marine Service. On leaving the Service he took up commercial activities, first in Ceylon and later in Bengal. Acland realised the commercial potential of jute when he saw it being used by Oriya gardeners employed in the botanical gardens of the East India Company. They called it ‘jhut’, a term from which the modern name seems to have derived. At this time, jute was still virtually unknown outside India where its fibres had been used for centuries to make twine, cord and coarse fibres. It grew best in a hot, moist atmosphere in areas with considerable rainfall, and most was produced in India’s Bengal province, where it flourished, especially in the highland districts. The stalks, which were either cut down with a sickle or pulled up by hand, were gathered into bundles and immersed in stagnant pools or streams to undergo the process known as ‘retting’, which loosened the fibres and separated them from the stem. To speed up this process, the operator would stand in the pool and beat and shake the stems to strip away the resinous bark. After the fibres had been agitated in the water to remove the vegetable impurities, they were wrung out and suspended on a line to dry in the sun. The fibres would then be made up into bundles and carefully sorted according to quality.

Yet a means had never been devised of producing it by a mechanical process. Acland got in touch with manufacturers of paper at Serampore who were experimenting with fibres in the hope of improving and cheapening their output, and this seems to have prompted the idea in Acland’s mind of finding a better means of making twine. He became excited – although the market for cotton, hemp, flax and other fibres was huge, they were relatively expensive. Jute was not as strong, but it was hard-wearing and tear-resistant, and had the advantage of being much cheaper. Thus it would be the ideal material for garden jobs for which the requirements were medium strength and low cost.

Acland went to Scotland to raise capital for his new business venture and to find a location for a factory. He opted for Dundee, which at that period was an important textile centre based around flax and hemp; it was, in consequence, only natural that the longer, coarser, but otherwise apparently similar jute fibres should be tested on the machinery already used for the preparation and spinning of flax and hemp. Or so Acland thought. In 1828 he established the Chapelshade works, where he struggled to overcome the many difficulties that resulted from the use of unsuitable machinery, because jute is far more woody and brittle than either flax or hemp. These difficulties, however, were gradually overcome. It was found that by mixing the fibres of two plants, Corchorus olitorius and Corchorus capsularis, an effective substitute for flax could be produced. Although the best jute was inferior in durability and strength to hemp and flax, and even single strands were of variable tenacity throughout their length, it was found that by making the twine three-ply its strength could be greatly increased.

Manufacturing began in 1832, yet business was initially slow. But in 1838 a representative of the Dutch government placed a large order with Acland for jute bags to be used for carrying the crop of coffee beans from West Africa. More than any other factor, that fortunate event led to the rapid growth of the industry. While Dundee was developing into an international centre for the manufacture of garden twine it was suggested to Acland that he should send the machinery to Bengal because the jute could be more economically spun there. From that suggestion came the building of the first mill in Calcutta in 1854. Ironically it was also the first step in Dundee’s decline, and eventual collapse, as a jute products centre.

In common with most other textile fibres, jute is susceptible to degradation from mildew, sunlight and heat; it can also be damaged by water, insects and rodents. Realising that the useful life of the fibre could be prolonged by appropriate chemical treatment, Acland began soaking his garden twines in copper compounds and green creosote. Thus by the time he died Acland had not only made twine affordable for gardeners, he had also established its distinctive traditional green appearance.

4 WILLIAM BARRON’S TREE-MOVER

THE LEGENDARY TRANSPLANTING of the Domesday Book’s ‘Buckland Yew’ near Dover in 1880 was a sensational feat of tree-moving. It was the crowning achievement of William Barron, the nineteenth century’s greatest expert at shifting huge trees; among his other accomplishments he had secured a name for himself as the creator of the first stately home garden open to the paying public, and was a pioneer of the ‘instant garden’ concept.

A distinctive means of moving trees had been devised by ‘Capability’ Brown, who for the purposes of landscaping Stowe in the 1740s had produced a two-wheeled machine, called a ‘yanker’ or ‘timber wheels’. The wheels supported a long beam or pole which would be strapped to the trunk and hauled horizontally, thereby with a fork-like action yanking the hapless tree from the ground. When creating the fabulous gardens at Versailles André Le Nôtre had used a similarly cumbersome method for extracting trees – as a consequence of which many died. Sir Henry Steuart, who in 1827 wrote The Planter’s Guide, took things a stage further by insisting that trees be prepared for moving a year or two in advance by having trenches dug around them and infilled to encourage the growth of a mass of fibrous roots before the move took place. Despite this, Steuart was a leading advocate of the Brownite yanking technique; although he recognised there could be advantages in hoisting trees vertically, he also favoured pulling trees down. Once down, the trees were transported on oak sledges, and on reaching the new planting site each tree would be raised into its new position by means of horses heaving a rope over crossed poles. However, it was William Barron who developed a reliable means of moving really large trees.

Born at Eccles in Berwickshire on 7 September 1800, William Barron was of an old Scottish family which originated in the neighbourhood of Aberdeen. William proved to be a sharp lad at school, where he studied Greek and French, and learned sufficient Hebrew to enable him to read the Bible in the original. Having developed a taste for horticulture, William was apprenticed to Lady Honstan Boswell’s garden at Blackadder, Berwickshire. During his apprenticeship he studied his profession with such effort that he obtained a post at the Botanic Garden, Edinburgh; here, much to his surprise, he was put in full charge of the greenhouses. He continued working there for three years, during which time he doubtless gained some experience of moving light shrubs on the two-wheeled contraption designed by the head gardener at Edinburgh, William McNab. This lightweight apparatus was probably created for the purpose of shifting small trees when the Botanic Garden moved to a new site in Edinburgh in 1824. Having expressed a wish to specialise in pine forcing, Barron was sent by McNab to the Duke of Northumberland’s estate at Syon House, Isleworth. While there, he assisted in planting its large conservatory. Then, in March 1830, Barron was appointed to oversee the Earl of Harrington’s gardens at Elvaston Castle, Derbyshire, where virtually nothing had ever been done to improve or ornament the grounds.

Although he did have something of an artistic mind, William delighted in tinkering with mechanical contraptions. Soon after his arrival at Elvaston that August he compulsively set about repairing a double-pistoned water engine he had found abandoned there. That winter there was civil unrest and Nottingham Castle was burnt down by a mob, who subsequently turned their attention to Elvaston. Though the castle was attacked and a serious fire broke out, Barron’s repaired engine helped to bring the blaze under control. On arriving to inspect the damage, Harrington’s first words were: ‘Barron, you have saved my castle.’ William told him: ‘I have only done my duty.’ The episode had the effect of proving Barron’s considerable powers of ingenuity and, unintentionally, securing the absolute trust of his employer. By then Barron’s character was well formed. A man of indomitable perseverance, he had profound religious faith and was one of the pioneers of the Temperance cause at a time when such a position was difficult to maintain.

In 1831 the 4th Earl of Harrington married the beautiful though promiscuous actress Maria Foote (1798–1867), previously implicated in several salaciously high-profile affairs. This time the union was a love match, and for the next twenty years, having retreated from Society, the earl and his actress lived at Elvaston in total solitude. The earl’s instructions were: ‘If Queen Victoria comes, show her around, but admit no one else.’ Harrington had asked ‘Capability’ Brown to lay out the gardens there, but Brown refused, arguing that the land was too flat. So the work was carried out by William Barron instead. It made his name and enabled him to go on to rival Brown.

The terrain at Elvaston was indeed flat and low, as was the adjoining country, being only a few feet above the level of the River Derwent which sluggishly flowed close by. Unperturbed, Barron spent the next four years busily draining the ground and establishing a kitchen garden. In November 1830, Harrington declared that he wanted to move three cedar of Lebanon trees, each 12 metres tall. Barron duly dug trenches around the trees to encourage new roots, and then, having infilled the trenches he prepared to wait a year. But the earl insisted that he wanted them moved in February – just four months later! Barron had been unimpressed by Steuart’s written work and knew enough about it to realise that the yanker machines would never be able to shift such big trees. However, on seeing Harrington’s disappointment, he told him: ‘No such trees have ever been successfully removed before, but if your lordship will support me I will form a plan of my own and remove your trees and make them grow.’

A disadvantage of the transplanting machines used by Henry Steuart was that the trees suffered from having their roots laid bare. Barron thought that trees should be planted with their roots encased in a ball of earth and that instead of being dropped into a hole the rootball should be rested on the ground and a new mound built up around it. In order to move trees with their heavy rootballs intact, Barron designed a sturdy four-wheeled cart which could raise and lower them vertically on chains by means of lever-operated ratcheted windlasses. Having built a suitably strong machine, in February 1831 he successfully moved all three cedars of Lebanon to the East Avenue. Then in November he shifted another cedar, this one 16 metres high. Clearly this was a means by which dramatic effects could instantly be brought to the unpropitiously flat terrain at Elvaston.

From this time until the death of the 4th earl, tree-moving on the most extensive scale was practised at Elvaston. Barron scoured the county to find specimens, and many old yew trees, some of them hundreds of years old, were brought distances of 30 kilometres or more. The surrounding countryside became like a scene from H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, with villagers agog to see Barron’s machines lurching along the rutted lanes bearing cargoes of towering trees. Hundreds of native specimens, and even already-crafted topiary, were transported by this means.

The pleasure grounds at Elvaston, which were practically non-existent in 1831, were gradually extended and most elaborately laid out. By 1851 the fire-damaged castle had been repaired and the garden sported an arboretum containing virtually every known species of conifer. Major avenues were lined with parallel rows of Irish and golden yews, and even monkey puzzle trees. The centrepiece of the entire 240-hectare garden, which was based on a sixteenth-century design, was a topiary collection. Reputedly, the garden also contained some 18 kilometres of yew and other evergreen hedges. Not only had Barron begun and completed a garden that was one of the most distinctive and regal in Britain, but he had done it virtually ‘instantly’.

On inheriting Elvaston in 1851, the 5th earl found himself in somewhat awkward financial circumstances, resulting from his father’s lavish expenditure on the estate, inspired by the love of an actress. The impoverished successor, who needed to cut back on the maintenance of the gardens to help make ends meet, took the drastic step of opening Elvaston to the general public. It is usually thought that the first stately home to be commercially opened to the public was Longleat in 1949 (although in 1776 the Earl of Pembroke had let a select few members of the public into his Wilton House free of charge). At Elvaston the threadbare earl succeeded in evading the ignominy of stooping so low as to ask for money for himself by claiming that the proceeds from his hospitality were going to ‘charitable purposes’. Visitors were admitted to the grounds on payment of three shillings, an exorbitant charge notwithstanding which many thousands of people flocked to see the gardens.

It was not only the opening of the castle grounds which brought William Barron to the world’s attention. In 1852, shortly after the death of the 4th earl, Barron wrote a successful book, The British Winter Garden, which met with ready sales. Full of valuable hints as to the proper method of moving trees and the right replanting conditions, it also dealt with difficulties resulting from planting ‘pot-bound’ trees, which up to that time had not been much appreciated. He complemented his considerable knowledge with striking illustrations. Barron soon became one of the most prominent figures in the horticultural world, not only as a landscape gardener but also as a great authority on conifers. The ‘Barron transporter’ certainly had some disadvantages – it required regiments of labour, and because it carried the trees vertically the selected route had to be free of overhead obstructions. Even so it was widely used, and its design was emulated by other gardeners. At Edinburgh, a relation of William McNab, James McNab, developed a strengthened tree-mover along the lines of Barron’s, as did Edouard André, who used Barron-style machines to reshape the tree-lined avenues in Paris prior to the 1867 French Exposition.

Leaving Elvaston in 1862, Barron went into business as a nurseryman and landscape gardener, establishing premises at Borrowash, almost within sight of the garden he had done so much to make famous. William Barron & Son (he was joined by his eldest child who had returned from studying gardening abroad) accumulated a large and varied collection of hardy trees and shrubs, especially conifers. Yet William could never be induced to sell his choicest specimens – which he called his ‘Decoy Ducks’. A shrewd businessman, he knew they lured in the customers. His real renown derived from his great experience in the moving of large trees; he would undertake with confidence tasks that others would – and did – shrink from. The results he achieved in terms of arrangement and high rates of success were without parallel. He took on numerous commissions all over Britain, so that he might have projects under his supervision in a dozen counties at once.

The transporting of an ancient yew in the churchyard at Buckland-in-Dover in 1880 became by far Barron’s most famous achievement. Mentioned in the Domesday Book and reputed to be over a thousand years old, the much-loved tree had grown too close to the west wall of St Andrew’s parish church and had to be moved. Amid considerable local trepidation, in 1879 Barron was invited to give his opinion on the likelihood of successfully transplanting the tree. There were many who objected to its removal but, undaunted, he declared the move feasible. The undertaking excited worldwide interest, attracting the press and many writers. Hundreds of members of the public flocked to witness the removal, a privilege for which Barron – perhaps mindful of the 5th earl’s venture – insisted each be charged two shillings and sixpence! Dug around, then raised by powerful screw-jacks onto rollers, the 55-tonne ancient tree was slowly hauled by giant windlasses – such as were used for moving bathing machines – 62 metres across the churchyard, successfully reaching its new site to much acclaim on 5 March 1880. The scale of this operation was probably never matched and Barron, who had been rather more apprehensive than he let on, later admitted that all the other trees he had moved had been ‘chickens compared to the Buckland Yew’.

Enjoying perfect health, Barron kept himself active in the tree-shifting business until his retirement in 1889. He died on 8 April 1891. To the end, his wonderful memory enabled him to recount the minutest details of events of decades earlier, and he was able to both read and write without glasses to within a week of his death. An altruistic entrepreneur, he remained a religious man of the sternest integrity, who under no circumstances would allow his principles to be subservient to his interests. His obituary in The Gardeners’ Chronicle described him as someone ‘who while he lived by horticulture, never forgot that it was his duty to live for it as well’.

5 CARL NYBERG’S FLAME-GUN

IN THE SPRING OF 1955 garden weeds surviving in the crevices of paths had as much reason to cringe in terror as those First World War trench soldiers who caught a glimpse of the new mechanical weapon – the tank – thundering towards them. This time the newfangled attack weapon belching fire was a hooded flame-gun on wheels – an innovative development of the blowlamp invented in Sweden by Carl Nyberg.