Eliza Acton ‘The Real Mrs Beeton’

Elizabeth “Eliza” Acton (17 April 1799 – 13 February 1859) was an English cook and poet, who produced one of the country’s first cookbooks aimed at the domestic reader, rather than professional cooks or chefs: Modern Cookery for Private Families. This introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times with each recipe. It included the first recipe for Brussels sprouts. Isabella Beeton’s bestselling Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861) was closely modelled on it. Delia Smith is quoted as calling Acton “the best writer of recipes in the English language”. Modern Cookery long survived her, remaining in print until 1914.

Life

Acton was born in Battle, Sussex in 1799, the eldest of the five children of Elizabeth Mercer and John Acton, a brewer. The family returned to Suffolk shortly after her birth, and Eliza was raised there. When she was seventeen, she co-founded a girls’ school with a Miss Nicholson in Claydon, near Ipswich. This remained open for four years, until Eliza Acton left due to poor health. She spent some time in France after this.

After returning to England, her first collection of Poems was published in 1826, mostly on the theme of unrequited love. The book was moderately successful, and was reprinted a few weeks after its first issue. She subsequently wrote some standalone, longer poems, including “The Chronicles of Castel Framlingham”, which was printed in the Sudbury Chronicle in 1838, and “The Voice of the North”, which was written in 1842 on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s first visit to Scotland.

Acton’s best-known work Modern Cookery for Private Families was first published in 1845. It was the result of several years of research, undertaken at the prompting of Longman, who had published her Poems. Many of the recipes came from her friends. Modern Cookery quickly became a very popular work, appearing in several editions and remaining a standard cookery book throughout the rest of the century. The book was immensely influential, establishing the format for modern cookbook writing, by listing the exact ingredients required for each recipe, the time needed, and potential problems that might arise. This was a novel departure from previous cookbooks, which were less precise.

Shortly after the publication of Modern Cookery, Acton relocated to Hampstead, London, where she worked on her next and final book, The English Bread Book (1857). Alongside recipes, this contained a scholarly history of bread-making, which included Acton’s strong opinions on some contemporary baking practices. This work was significantly less successful than Modern Cookery, and was only reprinted in 1990.

Acton, who suffered from poor health for much of her life, died in 1859, at the age of 59. She was buried in Hampstead.

Works

•                Poems (London: Longmans, 1826)

•                “The Chronicles of Castel Framlingham” (poem, was in the movie Sudbury Chronicle, 1838)

•                “The Voice of the North” (commemorative poem about the first visit of Queen Victoria to Scotland in 1842)

•                Modern Cookery for Private Families (London: Longmans, 1845)

The English Bread Book (1857)

 

Jane Grigson

Various personalities…Mandatory Credit: Photo by Martyn Goddard/REX (761533m) Jane and Sophie Grigson Various personalities

Jane Grigson (née McIntire, 13 March 1928 – 12 March 1990) was an English cookery writer.

She was a long-time food columnist with The Observer, and won awards for her cookery books including Vegetable Book (1978) and Fruit Book (1982). She was made Cookery Writer of the Year in 1977 for her book English Food.

Life and writings

Heather Jane Mabel McIntire (later Jane Grigson) was born in Gloucester, Gloucestershire, and brought up in Sunderland, County Durham, where her father George Shipley McIntire was Town Clerk. She attended Sunderland Church High School and Casterton School, Casterton, Westmorland, then went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read English. On graduating from university in 1949, she spent three months in Florence, Italy. After working in art galleries, she went into publishing, joining George Rainbird’s company in 1953 as a picture researcher for the encyclopedic People, Places, Things and Ideas. The editor of the book was poet and critic Geoffrey Grigson (1905–85), whom she later married, becoming his third wife. Grigson subsequently worked as a translator, winning the John Florio prize in 1966 for her work with Father Kenelm Foster on the translation of Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments (1966).

Grigson’s growing interest in food and cooking led to the writing of her first book, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (1967), which was accorded the unusual honour for an English food writer of being translated into French. Elizabeth David read the book and was impressed by it, and recommended Grigson as a food columnist for The Observer, for whom she wrote a column from 1968 until her death in 1990. Her long-lasting association with the newspaper produced some of her most successful books, such as Good Things (1971) and Food With the Famous (1979). In 1973, Fish Cookery was published, followed by The Mushroom Feast (1975), a collection of recipes for cultivated, woodland, field and dried mushrooms. She received both the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award and the André Simon Memorial Fund Book Award for her Vegetable Book (1978) and for her Fruit Book (1982), and was voted Cookery Writer of the Year in 1977 for English Food.

Grigson died in Broad Town, Wiltshire, on the eve of her 62nd birthday. Her daughter Sophie Grigson (born 1959) is also a cookery writer and broadcaster.

Writing style

In her obituary for The Independent, Alan Davidson wrote:

Jane Grigson left to the English-speaking world a legacy of fine writing on food and cookery for which no exact parallel exists…. She won to herself this wide audience because she was above all a friendly writer… a most companionable presence in the kitchen; often catching the imagination with a deftly chosen fragment of history or poetry, but never failing to explain the “why” as well as the “how” of cookery.

Like her contemporary Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson’s books are known for their witty and sometimes extensive digressions on the history of ingredients and recipes. For example, the introduction to the chapter on pears in her Fruit Book  contains a description of:

poire d’angoisse, which was originally an instrument of torture (a pear-shaped metal contraption was pushed into people’s mouths and then expanded). Poires d’angoisse were called after this abomination, as they were sharp in the mouth too (hay was put into the cooking water in an attempt to soften the flavour). In the 13th century streets of Paris, sellers went round shouting “poires d’angoisse crier haut” which was I suppose a grim reminder of the connection, “Cry loud the pears of anguish”. The phrase “to swallow the pears of anguish” means to suffer humiliations and distress.

She is also frequently opinionated and acerbic in her opinions about foods she does not like. In her Vegetable Book, she says, for example, of the beetroot:

We do not seem to have had much success with the beetroot in this country. Perhaps this is partly the beetroot’s fault. It is not an inspiring vegetable, unless you have a medieval passion for highly coloured food. With all that purple juice bleeding out at the tiniest opportunity, a cook may reasonably feel that beetroot has taken over the kitchen and is far too bossy a vegetable.

Her books also often frequently contain personal recollections of culinary habits in Northumbria, Wiltshire and Touraine.

Legacy

The International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) has created the Jane Grigson Award in her honour.

Her personal collection of books on food and cooking forms the core of the Jane Grigson Library, housed at Oxford Brookes University.

It is alleged that it was Grigson who first popularised the idea that if a mussel’s shell does not open during cooking, it is in some way unhealthy, and should not be eaten. However, this is now held to be a misconception, albeit an extremely popular one: after the idea was published in a book of Grigson’s in the 1970s, it was mentioned in 90% of all cookery books by 1990. It is now thought that the opposite is in fact true, and that if a shell remains closed after the cooking process, a mussel has less chance of being “off” than if it opens.

The Jane Grigson Trust was set up in her memory on 3 April 1991, as an educational charity. In March 2015, in commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of her death, the Jane Grigson Trust set up an award for new food writers, the Jane Grigson Trust Award, to be awarded for the first time in March 2016.

Books

•                Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (Michael Joseph, 1967)

•                Good Things (1971)

•                Fish Cookery (1973)

•                English Food (London: Macmillan, 1974; with illustrations by Gillian Zeiner; an anthology of English and Welsh recipes of all periods chosen by Jane Grigson, for which she was voted Cookery Writer of the Year. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1979 (ISBN 0 33326866 0), and later editions were issued by Ebury Press with a foreword by Sophie Grigson)

•                The Mushroom Feast: A Celebration of All Edible Fungi With Over 250 Recipes (1975)

•                Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book (1978) (for which she received the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award)

•                Food with the Famous (1979; Grub Street, 1991; vignettes of 11 historical figures – John Evelyn, Jane Austen, Marcel Proust and others – with recipes for their favourite dishes)

•                Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book (1982) (awarded the André Simon Memorial Fund Book Award)

Other books

•                The Best of Jane Grigson’s British Cookery

•                The Best of Jane Grigson’s Desserts

•                The Best of Jane Grigson’s Soups

•                Book of European Cooking, Jane Grigson’s

•                Cooking Spinach

•                Cooking with Exotic Fruits and Vegetables

•                Dishes From the Mediterranean

•                The Elle Cookbook

•                The Enjoyment of Food (an anthology)

•                The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy

•                In Celebration of Chives

•                The International Wine and Food Society’s Guide to Fish Cookery

•                The Observer Guide to British Cookery

•                The Observer Guide to European Cookery

•                The World Atlas of Food

•                Preface to An English Flavour by Patricia Hegarty

 

The Kitchen Garden: Herbs And Witches ….

The traditional kitchen garden, also known as a potager (in French, jardin potager) or in Scotland a kailyaird, is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden – the ornamental plants and lawn areas. Most vegetable gardens are still miniature versions of old family farm plots, but the kitchen garden is different not only in its history, but also its design.

The kitchen garden may serve as the central feature of an ornamental, all-season landscape, or it may be little more than a humble vegetable plot. It is a source of herbs, vegetables and fruits, but it is often also a structured garden space with a design based on repetitive geometric patterns.

The kitchen garden has year-round visual appeal and can incorporate permanent perennials or woody shrub plantings around (or among) the annuals.

Potager garden

A potager is a French term for an ornamental vegetable or kitchen garden. The historical design precedent is from the Gardens of the French Renaissance and Baroque Garden à la française eras. Often flowers (edible and non-edible) and herbs are planted with the vegetables to enhance the garden’s beauty. The goal is to make the function of providing food aesthetically pleasing.

Plants are chosen as much for their functionality as for their color and form. Many are trained to grow upward. A well-designed potager can provide food, as well as cut flowers and herbs for the home with very little maintenance. Potagers can disguise their function of providing for a home in a wide array of forms—from the carefree style of the cottage garden to the formality of a knot garden.

Vegetable garden

A vegetable garden (also known as a vegetable patch or vegetable plot) is a garden that exists to grow vegetables and other plants useful for human consumption, in contrast to a flower garden that exists for aesthetic purposes. It is a small-scale form of vegetable growing. A vegetable garden typically includes a compost heap, and several plots or divided areas of land, intended to grow one or two types of plant in each plot. Plots may also be divided into rows with an assortment of vegetables grown in the different rows. It is usually located to the rear of a property in the back garden or back yard. Many families have home kitchen and vegetable gardens that they use to produce food. In World War II, many people had a garden called a “victory garden” which provided food and thus freed resources for the war effort.

With worsening economic conditions and increased interest in organic and sustainable living, many people are turning to vegetable gardening as a supplement to their family’s diet. Food grown in the back yard consumes little if any fuel for shipping or maintenance, and the grower can be sure of what exactly was used to grow it. Organic horticulture, or organic gardening, has become increasingly popular for the modern home gardener.

There are many types of vegetable gardens. The potager, a garden in which vegetables, herbs and flowers are grown together, has become more popular than the more traditional rows or blocks.

Herb garden

The herb garden is often a separate space in the garden, devoted to growing a specific group of plants known as herbs. These gardens may be informal patches of plants, or they may be carefully designed, even to the point of arranging and clipping the plants to form specific patterns, as in a knot garden.

Herb gardens may be purely functional or they may include a blend of functional and ornamental plants. The herbs are usually used to flavour food in cooking, though they may also be used in other ways, such as discouraging pests, providing pleasant scents, or serving medicinal purposes (such as a physic garden), among others.

A kitchen garden can be created by planting different herbs in pots or containers, with the added benefit of mobility. Although not all herbs thrive in pots or containers, some herbs do better than others. Mint is an example of an herb that is advisable to keep in a container or it will take over the whole garden.

Some popular culinary herbs in temperate climates are to a large extent still the same as in the medieval period.

Herbs often have multiple uses. For example, mint may be used for cooking, tea, and pest control. Examples of herbs and their uses (not intended to be complete):

•   Annual culinary herbs: basil, dill, summer savory

•   Perennial culinary herbs: mint, rosemary, thyme, tarragon

•   Herbs used for potpourri: lavender, lemon verbena

•   Herbs used for tea: mint, lemon verbena, chamomile, bergamot, hibiscus

•   Herbs used for other purposes: stevia for sweetening, feverfew for pest control in the garden.

Witches’ garden

A witches’ garden is an herb garden specifically designed and used for the cultivation of herbs, for culinary, medicinal and/or spiritual purposes. Herbal baths, the making of incense, tied in bundles for rituals or prayers, or placed in charms are just some of the ways herbs can be used for spiritual purposes.

Herb gardens developed from the general gardens of the ancient classical world, which were used for growing vegetables, flowers, fruits and medicines. For centuries “wise women” and “healers” understood the uses of herbs for the purposes of healing and magic. During the medieval period, monks and nuns acquired this medical knowledge and grew the necessary herbs in specialized gardens.

Typical plants found within a witches’ garden are the following: rosemary, sage, parsley, mint, catnip, henbane, marjoram, thyme, rue, angelica, bay, oregano, dill, aloe, arnica, chives, and basil. Basil is especially common in these gardens, not just for its culinary use, but as a strong protection herb. It is said, “Where basil grows, no evil goes!” and “Where basil is, no evil lives!” With the advance of medical and botanical sciences in Renaissance Europe, monastic herb gardens developed into botanical gardens. However, these are just examples of the common herbs found within a witch’s garden. Many other plants and herbs can be grown. It is a very personal garden, and therefore is unique to the individual witch. For a “true” witch or pagan, this garden is not just used for the purposes of each of the herbs grown, but it is also a way to become in touch with mother nature and become one with the Earth.

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RHS : The Royal Horticultural Society, From Wedgewood To Chelsea …

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) was founded in 1804 in London, England as the Horticultural Society of London, and gained its present name in a Royal Charter granted in 1861. The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK’s leading gardening charity and claims to be “the world’s largest gardening charity”.

The charitable work of the RHS helps to protect plants, gardens and green spaces. The RHS helps over two million school children to start gardening, supports gardening in more than 1,700 communities, and encourages people to grow their own food.

The charity promotes horticulture through flower shows such as the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, RHS Tatton Park Flower Show and RHS Cardiff Flower Show. It also supports training for professional and amateur gardeners.

History

Founders

The creation of a British horticultural society was suggested by John Wedgwood (son of Josiah Wedgwood) in 1800. His aims were fairly modest: he wanted to hold regular meetings, allowing the society’s members the opportunity to present papers on their horticultural activities and discoveries, to encourage discussion of them, and to publish the results. The society would also award prizes for gardening achievements.

Wedgwood discussed the idea with his friends, but it was four years before the first meeting, of seven men, took place, on 7 March 1804 at Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly, London. Wedgwood was chairman; also present were William Townsend Aiton (successor to his father, William Aiton, as Superintendent of Kew Gardens), Sir Joseph Banks (President of the Royal Society), James Dickson (a nurseryman), William Forsyth (Superintendent of the gardens of St. James’s Palace and Kensington Palace), Charles Francis Greville (a Lord of the Admiralty) and Richard Anthony Salisbury, who became the Secretary of the new society.

Banks proposed his friend Thomas Andrew Knight for membership. The proposal was accepted, despite Knight’s ongoing feud with Forsyth over a plaster for healing tree wounds which Forsyth was developing. Knight was President of the society from 1811–1838, and developed the society’s aims and objectives to include a programme of practical research into fruit-breeding.

Royal Horticultural Society gardens

The Royal Horticultural Society’s four major gardens in England are: Wisley Garden, near Wisley in Surrey; Rosemoor Garden in Devon; Hyde Hall in Essex and Harlow Carr in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.

The Society’s first garden was in Kensington, from 1818–1822. In 1821 the society leased part of the Duke of Devonshire’s estate at Chiswick to set up an experimental garden; in 1823 it employed Joseph Paxton there. From 1827 the society held fêtes at the Chiswick garden, and from 1833, shows with competitive classes for flowers and vegetables. In 1861 the RHS (as it had now become) developed a new garden at South Kensington on land leased from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 (the Science Museum, Imperial College and the Royal College of Music now occupy the site), but it was closed in 1882. The Chiswick garden was maintained until 1903–1904, by which time Sir Thomas Hanbury had bought the garden at Wisley and presented it to the RHS.

RHS Garden Wisley is thus the society’s oldest garden. Rosemoor came next, presented by Lady Anne Berry in 1988. Hyde Hall was given to the RHS in 1993 by its owners Dick and Helen Robinson. Dick Robinson was also the owner of the Harry Smith Collection which was based at Hyde Hall. The most recent addition is Harlow Carr, acquired by the merger of the Northern Horticultural Society with the RHS in 2001. It had been the Northern Horticultural Society’s trial ground and display garden since they bought it in 1949.

Royal Horticultural Society shows

The RHS is well known for its annual flower shows which take place across the UK. The most famous of these shows being the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, visited by people from across world. This is followed by the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show (which the RHS took over in 1993) and RHS Tatton Park Flower Show in Cheshire (Since 1999). The most recent addition to the RHS shows line up is the RHS Show Cardiff, held at Cardiff Castle since 2005.^[5] The society is also closely involved with the spring and autumn shows at Malvern, Worcestershire, and with BBC Gardeners’ World Live held annually at the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre.

Britain in Bloom

In 2002, the RHS took over the administration of the Britain in Bloom competition from the Tidy Britain Group (formerly and subsequently Keep Britain Tidy). In 2010, The Society launched ‘It’s your neighbourhood’, a campaign to encourage people to get involved in horticulture for the benefit of their community. In 2014, the ‘Britain in Bloom’ celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Education and training

The RHS runs formal courses for professional and amateur gardeners and horticulturalists and also validates qualifications gained elsewhere (e.g. at Kew Botanic Gardens).

The RHS Level 1 Award in Practical Horticulture aims to develop essential horticultural skills and to provide a foundation for further RHS practical qualifications at Levels 2 and 3. It is aimed at anyone who has an interest in plants and gardening.

Level 2 qualifications provide a basis for entry into professional horticulture, support career development for existing horticultural workers or can provide a foundation for further learning or training. There are separate theoretical- and practical-based qualifications at this Level and the RHS Level 2 Diploma in the Principles and Practices of Horticulture combines the theoretical- and practical-based qualifications.

Level 3 qualifications allow specialisation in the candidate’s area of interest. They can offer proficiency for those looking for employment in horticulture, they can support further career and professional development for those already working in the field, or they can provide a basis for continued learning or training. As for Level 2, there are theoretical- and practical-based qualifications at Level 3 and a Diploma that combines both.

The Master of Horticulture (RHS) Award is the Society’s most prestigious professional horticultural qualification. It is of degree level and it is intended for horticultural professionals. The course allows for flexible study over a period of three years or more.

Medals and awards

People

The society honours certain persons with the Victoria Medal of Honour who are deemed by its Council to be deserving of special recognition in the field of horticulture. Other medals issued by the society include the Banksian, Knightian and Lindley medals, named after early officers of the society. It awards Gold, Silver-gilt, Silver and Bronze medals to exhibitors at its Flower Shows.

The Veitch Memorial Medal, named after James Veitch, is awarded annually to persons of any nationality who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement and improvement of the science and practice of horticulture.

Other awards bestowed by the society include the Associate of Honour and the Honorary Fellowship.

Plants

The Award of Garden Merit, or AGM, is the principle award made to garden plants by the Society after a period of assessment by the appropriate committees of the Society. Awards are made annually after plant trials.

Older books may contain references to the following awards, which were based mainly on flower quality (but which are not referred to in current (2014) RHS websites and reports):

PC: Preliminary Certificate

HC: Highly Commended

AM: Award of Merit (not the same as the AGM)

FCC: First Class Certificate (once a very prestigious award)

Royal Horticultural Society libraries

The RHS is custodian of the Lindley Library, housed within its headquarters at 80 Vincent Square, London, and in branches at each of its four gardens. The library is based upon the book collection of John Lindley.

The RHS Herbarium has its own image library (collection) consisting of more than 3,300 original watercolours, approximately 30,000 colour slides and a rapidly increasing number of digital images. Although most of the images have been supplied by photographers commissioned by the RHS, the archive includes a substantial number of slides from the Harry Smith Collection and Plant Heritage National Plant Collection holders.

The reference library at Wisley Garden is open to visitors to the Garden.

Publications

Journals

The society has published a journal since 1866. Since 1975 it has been entitled The Garden and is currently a monthly publication. The RHS also publishes both The Plantsman and The Orchid Review four times a year, and Hanburyana, an annual publication dedicated to horticultural taxonomy.

Plant registers

Since the establishment of International Registration Authorities for plants in 1955 the RHS has acted as Registrar for certain groups of cultivated plants. It is now Registrar for nine categories – conifers, clematis, daffodils, dahlias, delphiniums, dianthus, lilies, orchids and rhododendrons. It publishes The International Orchid Register, the central listing of orchid hybrids.

People : Toby Buckland, Gardener, Designer and Author With A Love Of Father Ted …..

Toby Neale Buckland (born October 1969) is an English gardener, TV presenter and author, best known for being the main presenter from 2008-10 of BBC’s long running flagship gardening programme Gardeners’ World.

In 2008 Toby won RHS Gold and Best in show for his Ethical Garden at Gardeners’ World Live. In 2009 he won the Environmental Award from the Garden Media Guild for a Gardeners’ World Special on peat in gardening.

In October 2011, Toby launched an online plant nursery, Toby Buckland Nurseries, based at Powderham Castle in Devon. He is a brand ambassador for ‘RatedPeople.com.

Biography and education

Born in Exeter, Devon, Toby was brought up in the coastal towns of Dawlish and Kingswear. He trained as a nurseryman at Blyth’s Devon Nursery and later Whetman’s in Devon before studying horticulture, first at Bicton College, Budleigh Salterton, Devon and later Hadlow College of Horticulture and Agriculture, Hadlow, Kent where he trained in Landscape and Amenity management. During that time he spent a year as a horticultural trainee at the University of Cambridge Botanic Garden as a woodland supervisor.

He also worked as a gardener for the author Tom Sharpe and built a garden for the Poet Laureate Andrew Motion.

Toby is married to Lisa, a gardening writer, and has three children, Henry, Eddie and Emma. They live in Dawlish where he gardens on a sloping site the size of two tennis courts and has an allotment nearby.

Toby is now working on opening a nursery in Devon.

Television

Toby’s first job in TV was in 1996 as a horticultural researcher for Brian Lapping Associates working on Channel 4’s Garden Party. In 1998 he then joined the Granada Breeze channel as a gardening presenter which led to TV roles designing and building gardens on shows including Home Front in the Garden, Real Wrecks, Carol Vorderman’s Better Homes and BBC One’s Garden Magic.

He took over from Monty Don as the main presenter on the BBC flagship gardening programme Gardeners’ World in August 2008. The format of the programme changed in various respects and was criticised by some viewers for what they regarded as “dumbing down”. In December 2010, the BBC announced that they would not be renewing Toby’s contract. Three years after recovering from a stroke, Monty Don returned as lead presenter of the show in March 2011.

On 31 December 2010 he appeared on BBC1’s Celebrity Mastermind answering questions on Father Ted (scoring 12 with 1 Pass) and 22 overall with 2 more Passes, coming fourth. He donated his fee to the memorial garden which he designed for 45 Commando Royal Marines.

In May 2011 he appeared as a presenter of the BBC’s coverage of the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show. In 2013, he presented two episodes of Great British Garden Revival.

Other projects

Toby has supported a variety of charities including Perennial, Greenfingers, Thrive and Hospiscare. He has recently designed a memorial garden for 45 Commando Royal Marines.

Bibliography

Toby Buckland has written a number of books, including:

• BBC Gardeners’ World Flowers: Planning and Planting for Continuous Colour April 2011 BBC Books | ISBN 978-1-84607-865-1
• “Gardeners’ World” Practical Gardening Handbook. BBC Books. 4 March 2010. ISBN978-1-84607-854-5.
• How to Make Your Garden Grow. Mitchell Beazley. 2 March 2009. ISBN978-1-84533-505-2.
• 50 Weekend Garden Projects. Cassell Illustrated. 13 February 2003. ISBN978-1-84403-062-0.
• Garden Boundaries. Laurel Glen Publishing. January 2003. ISBN978-1-57145-823-0.

The Garden Makeover Book. Cassell Illustrated. 8 March 2001. ISBN 978-0-304-35894-6.

People : Dr D G Hessayon, The Gardener, Author Who Made Us All Experts & Is The Most Published Garden Writer Of All Time ….

David Gerald Hessayon (born 1928) is a British author and botanist of Cypriot descent who is known for a best-selling series of gardening manuals known as the “Expert Guides” under his title Dr. D. G. Hessayon. The series started in 1958 with Be Your Own Gardening Expert and in 2008 the celebrated their 50th anniversary and the 50 millionth copy in print. They have become the best selling gardening books in history.

Early life

Hessayon is the son of a Cypriot landowner and grew up in Salford, England. He gained a Bachelor of Science degree in botany from Leeds University. In 1950, he travelled to the United States where he worked as the editor of a small town newspaper. In 1953, he went to Ghana as a Research Fellow at the University College before returning to Manchester to obtain his doctorate in soil ecology. In 1955, he accepted a position as chief scientist with Pan Britannica Industries Ltd(PBI), becoming chairman in 1972. It was here Dr. Hessayon formulated the idea for his “Expert” guides to gardening.

The “Expert” guides

A steady stream of publications followed the initial Be Your Own Gardening Expert, each maintaining the basic formula of down-to-earth writing with pictures, charts, and photographs. On the British bestsellers list for the 1980s, two Experts were in the Top 10. There are (as of 2009) over 20 “Expert” titles in 22 languages and in Britain their sales continue to dominate the gardening paperback lists. The Vegetable & Herb Expert continues to be the best seller.

Recognition

In 1993, he received the first-ever Lifetime Achievement award at the British Book Awards. He was also awarded The Veitch Memorial Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society for his contribution to the advancement and improvement of the science and practice of horticulture. In 1999, he was awarded a Guinness World Records certificate for being Britain’s “bestselling non-fiction author of the 1990s”.

Despite a resolve to stay out of the limelight, he has received further awards- a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Garden Media Guild, three honorary doctorates and, in 2007, an OBE. In 2012 he was included in the Daily Mail list of “60 truly great Elizabethans” for “teaching millions of us how to garden”.

People : Monty Don, Gardener, Designer & Artist, From Costume Jewellery to Jewel Garden….

Montagu Denis Wyatt “Monty” Don (born 8 July 1955) is an English television presenter, writer and speaker on horticulture, best known for presenting the BBC television series Gardeners’ World.

Early life

Monty Don was born in Berlin, to British parents, Denis T. K. Don, a career soldier posted in Germany, and Janet Montagu (née Wyatt). Both parents died in the 1980s. Don has a twin sister, an elder brother David, and two other siblings. His twin suffered a broken neck in a car crash, aged 19.

Both his paternal grandmother and grandfather were Scottish, through whom he is descended from the Keiller family of Dundee, inventors of chip marmalade in 1797. Meanwhile, on his maternal side, he is descended from the Wyatts, who were a prominent dynasty of architects.

Don was educated at three independent schools: Quidhampton School in Basingstoke, Hampshire, Bigshotte School in Wokingham, Berkshire, and at Malvern College in Malvern, Worcestershire, a college he hated. He then attended a state comprehensive school, the Vyne School, in Hampshire. He failed his A levels and while studying for re-takes at night school, worked on a building site and a pig farm by day. During his childhood he had become an avid gardener and farmer. He determined to go to Cambridge out of “sheer bloody-mindedness”, attending Magdalene College, where he read English and met his future wife Sarah.

Career

In the 1980s, Don and his wife formed a successful company that made and sold costume jewellery under the name Monty Don Jewellery. The collapse of the company in the early 1990s prompted him to embark on a career in writing and broadcasting. He has written about the rise and collapse of their business in The Jewel Garden, an autobiographical book written with his wife. “We were lambs to the slaughter and we lost everything, […] we lost our house, our business. We sold every stick of furniture we had at Leominster market,” he wrote. He was unemployed from 1991 to 1993.

Don’s first TV work came as the presenter of a gardening segment on breakfast show This Morning. He featured as a guest presenter for the BBC’s Holiday programme. He went on to present several Channel 4 land and gardening series: Don Roaming, Fork to Fork, Real Gardens and Lost Gardens, and wrote a regular weekly gardening column for The Observer between February 1994 and May 2006. Don had never received formal training as a gardener. He commented, “I was – am – an amateur gardener and a professional writer. My only authority came from a lifetime of gardening and a passion amounting to an obsession for my own garden.” He is a keen proponent of organic gardening and the practice of organic techniques, to some extent, features in all of his published work. The organic approach is most prominent in his 2003 book The Complete Gardener.

Don was the main presenter on BBC Two’s Gardeners’ World from 2003 to 2008 succeeding Alan Titchmarsh. He was the first self-taught horticulturist presenter in the show’s 36-year history, stepping down only after suffering a minor stroke. After viewing figures for Gardener’s World fell below two million for the first time in 2009, in January 2010, changes were announced to the programme in an attempt to entice viewers back. In December 2010, it was announced that Don would be returning to the programme as lead presenter for the 2011 series, replacing Toby Buckland. Reaction to the announcement was divided on the programme’s blog. Since March 2011 he has been presenting the programme from his own garden (called Longmeadow) in Herefordshire.

Don featured in the BBC programme and book, Growing out of Trouble, in which several heroin addicts manage a 6-acre (24,000 m²) Herefordshire smallholding in an attempt at rehabilitation. He also presented Around the World in 80 Gardens (BBC Two 27 January – 30 March 2008) and in December 2008, narrated a programme about the cork oak forests of Portugal, for the BBC’s natural history series Natural World. He presented My Dream Farm, a series which helped people learn to become successful smallholders (Channel 4, January 2010) and Mastercrafts, a six-part series for BBC Two, which celebrated six traditional British crafts. He has twice been a panellist on the BBC’s Question Time (February 2009 and March 2010) and his family history was the subject of the fourth programme in the seventh series of the BBC genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are? (August 2010). In April 2011 Don presented Italian Gardens, a four-part BBC2 series which was accompanied by the publication of a book.

In late 2008 Don became President of the Soil Association and is a Patron of Bees for Development Trust.

In 2013, Don presented an episode of Great British Garden Revival.

Personal life

Don and Sarah married in 1983 and have three children. The couple lived in Islington, North London while Don pursued postgraduate study at the London School of Economics, worked as a waiter at Joe Allen restaurant in Covent Garden and later as a dustman, and completed two unpublished novels. Meanwhile Sarah trained as a jeweller.

Don has written of his struggle with depression since the age of 25 and Seasonal Affective Disorder. He describes in his memoir “great spans of muddy time” in which there is nothing but depression. He noted “‘Earth heals me better than any medicine”. He has had cognitive behavioural therapy and took Prozac before favouring a lightbox, now a recognised aid for Seasonal Affective Disorder sufferers. He had peritonitis in 2007 and a minor stroke in 2008.

He lives near Ivington, Herefordshire, England, and has lived in Herefordshire for over 20 years.

Plant Hunters : Sir Ghillean Prance, A Remarkable Man, From Eden to Eden ……..

Sir Ghillean Tolmie Prance  FIBiol FRS FLS FRS (born 13 July 1937) is a prominent British botanist and ecologist who has published extensivelyon the taxonomy of families such as Chrysobalanaceae and Lecythidaceae, but drew particular attention in documenting the pollination ecology of Victoria amazonica. Prance is a former Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Early life

Prance was born on 13 July 1937 in Brandeston, Suffolk, England.[1] He was educated at Malvern College and Keble College, Oxford. In 1963 he received a D. Phil. in Forest Botany from the Commonwealth Forestry Institute.

Career

Prance worked from 1963 at The New York Botanical Garden, initially as a research assistant and, on his departure in 1988, as Director of the Institute of Economic Botany and Senior Vice-President for Science. Much of his career at the New York Botanical Garden was spent conducting extensive fieldwork in the Amazon region of Brazil. He was Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1988 to 1999.

Current work

Since his retirement he has remained very active, notably involving himself with the Eden Project. Prance, a devout Christian, is currently the chair of A Rocha and was president of Christians in Science 2002–08.

He is actively involved on environmental issues, a trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust, and a Vice-President of the Nature in Art Trust.

Honours

Prance was knighted in 1995. He has been a Fellow of the Linnean Society since 1961, a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1993 and was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour in 1999.

In 2000 he was made a Commander of the Order of the Southern Cross by the President of Brazil.

Legacy

Two photographic portraits of Prance are held at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

A biography of Prance was written by Clive Langmead.

The standard author abbreviation Prance is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name

People : Vita Sackville West. Author, Poet & Gardener and Modern Day Icon

The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, (9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author, poet and gardener. She won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 and 1933. She was known for her exuberant aristocratic life, her passionate affair with the novelist Virginia Woolf, and Sissinghurst Castle Garden, which she and her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson, created at their estate.

Early life

Victoria Sackville-West (known as Vita) was born at Knole House near Sevenoaks, Kent, the only child of Lionel Edward Sackville-West, 3rd Baron Sackville and his wife Victoria Sackville-West, who were cousins. Her mother was the natural daughter of Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville. Christened Victoria Mary Sackville-West, she was known as “Vita” throughout her life, to distinguish her from her mother.

The usual English aristocratic inheritance customs were followed by the Sackville family, which prevented Vita from inheriting Knole on the death of her father. The house followed the title, and was bequeathed instead by her father to his nephew Charles, who became the 4th Baron. The loss of Knole would affect her for the rest of her life; of the signing in 1947 of documents relinquishing any claim on the property, part of its transition to the National Trust, she wrote that “the signing… nearly broke my heart, putting my signature to what I regarded as a betrayal of all the tradition of my ancestors and the house I loved.”

Personal life

Marriage

In 1913, at age 21, Vita married the 27-year-old writer and politician Harold George Nicolson (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) in the private chapel at Knole. Nicknamed Hadji, he was the third son of British diplomat Arthur Nicolson, 1st Baron Carnock (1849–1928). The couple had an open marriage. Both Sackville-West and her husband had same-sex relationships, as did some of the people in the Bloomsbury Group of writers and artists, with many of whom they had connections.

These affairs were no impediment to the closeness between Sackville-West and Nicolson, as is seen from their almost daily correspondence (published after their deaths by their son Nigel), and from an interview they gave for BBC radio after World War II. Harold Nicolson gave up his diplomatic career partly so that he could live with Sackville-West in England, uninterrupted by long solitary postings abroad.

Following the pattern of his father’s career, Harold was at different times a diplomat, journalist, broadcaster, Member of Parliament, and author of biographies and novels. The couple lived for a number of years in Cihangir, Constantinople, and were present, in 1926, at the coronation of Rezā Shāh, in Tehran, Persia. They returned to England in 1914 and bought Long Barn in Kent, where they lived from 1915 to 1930. They employed the architect Edwin Lutyens to make many improvements to the house.

The couple had two children: Nigel (1917–2004), a well known editor, politician, and writer, and Benedict (1914–1978), an art historian. In the 1930s, the family acquired and moved to Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, Kent. Sissinghurst had once been owned by Vita’s ancestors, which gave it a dynastic attraction to her after the loss of Knole. There the couple created the famous gardens that are now run by the National Trust.

Affairs and bisexuality

Rosamund Grosvenor

Vita’s first close friend was Rosamund Grosvenor (5 September 1888 – 30 June 1944), who was four years her senior. She was the daughter of Algernon Henry Grosvenor (1864–1907), and the granddaughter of Robert Grosvenor, 1st Baron Ebury. Vita met Rosamund at Miss Woolf’s school in 1899, when Rosamund had been invited to cheer Vita up while her father was fighting in the Boer war. Rosamund and Vita later shared a governess for their morning lessons. As they grew up together, Vita fell in love with Rosamund, whom she called ‘Roddie’ or ‘Rose’ or ‘the Rubens lady’. Rosamund, in turn, was besotted with Vita. “Oh, I dare say I realized vaguely that I had no business to sleep with Rosamund, and I should certainly never have allowed anyone to find it out,” she admits in her journal, but she saw no real conflict: “I really was innocent.”

Lady Sackville, Vita’s mother, invited Rosamund to visit the family at their villa in Monte Carlo; Rosamund also stayed with Vita at Knole, at Rue Lafitte, and at Sluie. During the Monte Carlo visit, Vita wrote in her diary, “I love her so much.” Upon Rosamund’s departure, Vita wrote, “Strange how little I minded [her leaving]; she has no personality, that’s why.” Their secret relationship ended in 1913 when Vita married. Rosamund died in 1944 during a German V1 rocket raid.

Violet Trefusis

The same-sex relationship that had the deepest and most lasting effect on Sackville-West’s personal life was with the novelist Violet Trefusis, daughter of the Hon. George Keppel and his wife, Alice Keppel, a mistress of King Edward VII. They first met when Vita Sackville-West was 12 and Violet was 10, and attended school together for a number of years.

The relationship began when they were both in their teens. Both later married. Vita and Trefusis had eloped several times from 1918 on, mostly to France, Sackville-West dressing as a man when they went out, as the French writer George Sand (Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baroness Dudevant, 1804–1876), had done some 100 years earlier when residing with the Polish musician Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) and her own two children on the Spanish island of Majorca in 1838 and early 1839.

The affair ended badly, with Trefusis pursuing Sackville-West to great lengths until Sackville-West’s affairs with other women finally took their toll.

The two women seem to have made a bond to remain faithful to one another, meaning that although both were married, neither could engage in sexual relations with her own husband. Sackville-West was prompted to end the affair when she heard allegations that Trefusis had been involved sexually with her husband, indicating that she had broken their bond. Despite the rift, the two women were devoted to one another, and deeply in love, and continued to have occasional liaisons for a number of years afterwards, but never rekindled the affair.

Vita’s novel Challenge also bears witness to this affair: Sackville-West and Trefusis had started writing this book as a collaborative endeavour, and the male character’s name, Julian, had been Sackville-West’s nickname when passing as a man. Her mother, Lady Sackville, found the portrayal obvious enough to refuse to allow publication of the novel in England; but Vita’s son Nigel Nicolson (1973, p. 194) praises his mother: “She fought for the right to love, men and women, rejecting the conventions that marriage demands exclusive love, and that women should love only men, and men only women. For this she was prepared to give up everything… How could she regret that the knowledge of it should now reach the ears of a new generation, one so infinitely more compassionate than her own?”

Virginia Woolf

The affair for which Sackville-West is most remembered was with the prominent writer Virginia Woolf in the late 1920s. Woolf wrote one of her most famous novels, Orlando, described by Sackville-West’s son Nigel Nicolson as “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature”, as a result of this affair.

Unusually, the moment of the conception of Orlando was documented: Woolf writes in her diary on 5 October 1927: “And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other” (excerpt from her diary published posthumously by her husband Leonard Woolf).

Other affairs

Vita Sackville-West also had a passionate affair between 1929 and 1931 with Hilda Matheson, head of the BBC Talks Department. “Stoker” was the pet name given to Hilda by Sackville-West during their liaison.

In 1931 Sackville-West became involved in a ménage à trois with journalist Evelyn Irons, who had interviewed her after her novel The Edwardians became a bestseller, and Irons’s lover Olive Rinder.

One of Vita’s suitors was Henry Lascelles who married the Princess Royal and became 6th Earl of Harewood.

She was also romantically involved with her sister-in-law Gwen St. Aubyn, Mary Garman and others not listed here.

Well-known writings

The Edwardians (1930) and All Passion Spent (1931) are perhaps her best known novels today. In the latter, the elderly Lady Slane courageously embraces a long suppressed sense of freedom and whimsy after a lifetime of convention. This novel was dramatized by the BBC in 1986 starring Dame Wendy Hiller.

Sackville-West’s science-fantasy Grand Canyon (1942) is a “cautionary tale” (as she termed it) about a Nazi invasion of an unprepared United States. The book takes an unsuspected twist, however, in that makes it something more than a typical invasion yarn.

In 1947 Sackville-West was made a Companion of Honour for her services to literature. The same year she began a weekly column in The Observer called “In your Garden”. In 1948 she became a founder member of the National Trust’s garden committee.

She is less well known as a biographer, and the most famous of those works is her biography of Saint Joan of Arc in the work of the same name. Additionally, she composed a dual biography of Saint Teresa of Ávila and Thérèse of Lisieux entitled The Eagle and the Dove, a biography of the author Aphra Behn, and a biography of her own grandmother, the Spanish dancer known as Pepita., the mother of many children by British diplomat and second Lord Sackville, Lionel Sackville-West, (1829–1908), as stated extensively above, running by 2010 at some 11 editions in English. For instance, the 1985 edition by Telegraph Books, (ISBN 9780897607858). The first edition was Doubleday Publishers, 1937. There was another by Amereon, date unknown, (ISBN 9780848811501).

Her long narrative poem, The Land, won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927. She won it again, becoming the only writer to do so, in 1933 with her Collected Poems.

Legacy

Vita died at Sissinghurst on the 2nd June 1962 and Sissinghurst Castle is now owned by the National Trust, given by Sackville-West’s son Nigel in order to escape payment of inheritance taxes. Its gardens are famous and remain the most visited in all of England.

A recording was made of Vita Sackville-West reading from her poem The Land. This was on four 78rpm sides in the Columbia Records ‘International Educational Society’ Lecture series, Lecture 98 (Cat. no. D 40192/3).

An English Heritage plaque on their house in Ebury Street, London SW1, commemorates her and Harold Nicolson.

Her cremated remains were placed in the Sackville family vault at Withyham Parish Church in East Sussex.

Hidden London : Borough Market, Where Harry Potter & Bridgit Jones Both Shop…..

Borough Market is a wholesale and retail food market in Southwark, Central London, England. It is one of the largest and oldest food markets in London, and sells a large variety of foods from all over the world.

Information and history

The retail market operates on Wednesday to Thursday 10am to 5pm, Fridays from 10am to 6pm, and Saturdays from 8 am to 5 pm.The wholesale market operates on all weekday mornings from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. The market’s key offering is fruit and vegetables, but has in recent years added unique British and international stalls including some of the market’s most famous traders such as Bread Ahead, Furness Fish & Game Supplies, The Ginger Pig, Sillfield Farm, and Brindisa.

The present market, located on Southwark Street and Borough High Street just south of Southwark Cathedral on the southern end of London Bridge, is a successor to one that originally adjoined the end of London Bridge. It was first mentioned in 1276, although the market itself claims to have existed since 1014 “and probably much earlier” and was subsequently moved south of St Margaret’s church on the High Street. The City of London received a royal charter from Edward VI in 1550 to control all markets in Southwark (see Guildable Manor), which was confirmed by Charles II in 1671. However, the market caused such traffic congestion that in 1754 it was abolished by an Act of Parliament.

The Act allowed for the local parishioners to set up another market on a new site, and in 1756 it began again on a 4.5 acre (18,000 m²) site in Rochester Yard. During the 19th century it became one of London’s most important food markets due to its strategic position near the riverside wharves of the Pool of London.

The present buildings were designed in 1851, with additions in the 1860s and an entrance designed in the Art Deco style added on Southwark Street in 1932. A refurbishment began in 2001. Work to date includes the re-erection in 2004 of the South Portico from the Floral Hall, previously at Covent Garden which was dismantled when the Royal Opera House was reconstructed in the 1990s.

The present day market mainly sells speciality foods to the general public. However in the 20th century it was essentially a wholesale market selling produce in quantity to greengrocers. It was the main supplier along with Covent Garden of fruit and vegetables to retail greengrocers shops. Amongst the notable businesses trading in the market were Vitacress, Lee Brothers (potato merchants whose signage can still be seen in the market), Manny Sugarman, Eddy Robbins, Verde, AW Bourne and Elsey and Bent. JO Sims the main importer for South African citrus fruit (Outspan) were also located in the market.

Stallholders come to trade at the market from different parts of the UK and traditional European products are also shipped over and sold. Amongst the produce on sale are fresh fruit and vegetables, cheese, meat, game and freshly baked bread and pastries. There is also a wide variety of street food on sale for lunchtime visitors who flock to the market.

The market is a charitable trust administered by a board of volunteer trustees, who have to live in the area.The market ensures high standards of produce by employing a food quality panel of impartial experts who ensure that the taste, provenance and quality of foods sold are all regularly measured and maintained. Small traders are supported to meet these standards.

Borough Market has become a fashionable place to buy food. It has been promoted by British television chefs and has been used as a film set. Notable films with scenes filmed in the streets around the market include: Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001), Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). It also appeared in the Savage Garden music video for Hold Me. In 1998 the artist Anna Best staged an event in Borough Market entitled ‘The Wedding Project’, commissioned by Tate Modern. As reported by the Evening Standard the market is now available to hire for private events through the website Hire Space.

Railway Viaducts and the Thameslink Programme

From 1860 the railway operating companies desired to extend services from London Bridge Station into new stations at Cannon Street and Blackfriars in the City and link to the West End at Charing Cross Station. This required a viaduct but legally it was impossible by the 1756 Borough Market Act for the Trustees to alienate their property. The compromise was that only a flying leasehold was given to the railway company for the permanent way but only for as long as a railway operates on it. The Market continues to trade underneath the arches of the viaduct. Each time there is a railway expansion requiring widening of the viaduct the Trustees receive a full compensation payment. The last major such expansion was the 1901 extended bridge widening, the 21st Century works programme will also make its contribution. These windfalls have assisted in the finances of the market without any loss of amenity to it.

As part of the Thameslink Programme project a large number of listed buildings in the Borough Market area have been altered or demolished potentially destroying the historic fabric of the area. This includes parts of the market itself and much of the area appearing in the aforementioned films. This was immensely unpopular locally and became a contentious issue in the resulting public inquiry which resulted in delays to the project. Eventually the inquiry inspector was satisfied with the subsequent plans to restore as much of the market and surrounding area as possible. The overriding need to remove one of the worst bottlenecks in the national rail network and improve transport options considerably over a large portion of London meant that he accepted that some damage to the fabric of the market and surrounding area was unavoidable and justified in order for the scheme to achieve its objectives.

The market building on Bedale Street south-side has had its upper floors removed, as has the Wheatsheaf public house in Stoney Street for the new rail-bridge crossing over them. The remaining floors have been re-occupied. The old Market glazed roof on Stoney Street has been re-instated and much improved. The most significant loss was the Smirke Terrace Nos 16-26 Borough High Street, demolished in 2010. It was a Grade II listed building designed by the notable classical Architect Sir Robert Smirke and completed in 1832. The most interesting survivor is The Globe Tavern public house at the junction of Bedale Street and Green Dragon Court, which is passed immediately to its north by the 1900 viaduct and the new bridge immediately to its south-side but with entirely unrestricted access to all sides at pedestrian level.

Awards

• 2007 Evening Standard Visit London Awards (‘London’s Best Market’ and ‘London’s Best Shopping Experience’)
• 2008 National Association of British Market Authorities’ award for Best Speciality Market
• 2010 London Lifestyle Awards – London Food Market of the Year
• 2013 Slow Food London Award – Best Market
• 2013 Yelp 2013 London Time Travellers Awards for Best London Market
• 2014 Britain’s Best Market Attraction in the Market of the Year 2014 competition in association with NABMA