à la japonaise
The Temperate House was celebrating Japan, with a jolly installation of paper and streamers, high in its domes, with haikus and bonsai and massed white, yellow and red chrysanthemums that represent sunrise, though rather modestly by Japanese standards. The Japanese celebrate the imperial flower with extravagance of artifice that has no equivalent in the West.
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.
Trad took to the ether as a blog in 2008. There have been two anthologies, in 1993 and 2009, and since 2008 the text has been published quarterly in Hortus magazine. Scroll back, if you have time to waste, over hundreds of earlier entries. Better, use the Search button to look up things that might interest you. This index facility is priceless to the diarist; now he can see how often he repeats himself. Thanks to Simon Appleby and Bookswarm for making this happen.
Trees was first published in 1973 as The International Book of Trees, two years after The World Atlas of Wine….
I started work on The World Atlas of Wine almost 50 years ago, in 1970. After four editions, at six-year…
The Garden Museum