It evens out Posted on December 28, 2012

I’m a great believer in averages. Choose the right slice of time and they always justify themselves. Nevertheless our weather records for 2012 surprise me. The national news tells us that it may have been England’s wettest year ever, but here in our corner of Essex it hasn’t broken records. At about 700 millimetres of rain, or 27.5 inches, it is certainly on the high side. We’ve had more, though. However puddly the ground

now, and however dismal the daily downpour, it is merely making up for the months at the beginning of the year when it should have rained but didn’t. There was hardly a drop in January, February or March.

Weather forecasting is easy. We were discussing the subject in October. ‘I can guarantee’, I said to my wife, ‘that we’ll have a soaking in November and December. It’s got to keep up with the average by the end of the year’.

I suspect there’s a hole in my logic, but who can deny that normality keeps elbowing its way back in ?

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Trad’s Diary started as the editorial column of the RHS Journal when it was remodelled and relaunched as The Garden in 1975. I was responsible for the changes, wrote the column then, and still do when I have an idea, 45 years later. I am Hugh Johnson, author of Trees, The Principles of Gardening, and lots of stuff about wine.

Trad borrows his name from John Tradescant, gardener to Lord Cecil at Hatfield and to King James I, one of the first to introduce plants from abroad to England. His family name, having become extinct, seemed a fitting label for a column of garden jottings. It was adopted in 1977 by the new Trust for the Garden Museum in Lambeth, where John Tradescant (the accent is on the second syllable) lived and is buried. Today the museum is in full and exciting expansion mode. I urge you to visit its website, visit it personally, and support it as much as you can.

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