Not many people are lucky enough to have time and space to plant an arboretum, let alone nurture it until the trees reach maturity. The fact that I am now on my second argues the devil’s luck – which I happily acknowledge. My first (to deserve the name) is growing, flourishing indeed, at Saling Hall in Essex, where we lived for 42 years. The second is taking shape at our daughter’s house on the fringe of the New Forest and only two miles from the sea. (That is not counting a much earlier effort on the North Downs in Kent; nothing to see here, as Constable Plod would say, but evidence of an urge to put roots in the ground; roots that would lead in time to a contribution to the landscape.)
Sceptics have often told me that nothing much would happen for so long that I shouldn’t bother. You can argue that a tree doesn’t merit the name until you can stand in its shade. Nonsense, I answer: I want to see its leading shoot up close, at eye level; see which buds open in what order, watch the shoot with the most vim take the lead, defy gravity and head straight north and the others accept their fate and become mere branches.
It was John Claudius Loudon, by the way, who coined the word arboretum. Who indeed originated many of the terms and ideas we now accept as fundamental to the language of gardening. Every time I pass his house in the Bayswater Road (number 3, Porchester Terrace) I remember this extraordinary work-driven Scotsman, traveller, designer (of greenhouses and cemeteries) and all-round gardening visionary. His encyclopaedias, two bricks thick, and The Garden Magazine, which he founded and ‘conducted’ from 1826 to 1844, laid down the ground-rules of Victorian gardening – many of which survive in essence to our days. His wife Jane’s contributions were just as impressive. Loudon lost his right arm and was a rheumatic invalid all his life, the son of a farmer in the Borders who achieved more for horticulture than anyone of his time.
