Social distancing Posted on July 29, 2020

I came across a sentence the other day in a pre-Victorian memoir that made me wonder who exactly did all the work in the huge gardens of the day. Brownism, of course, greatly reduced the detailed gardening of parterres and topiary. Sheep did a lot of mowing. We have seen photos of garden teams fifty-strong, the men all wearing hats, waistcoats and watchchains, the boys caps (the weeder women not even in shot). But here is Prince Puckler-Muskau, in a house-party at Lord Darnley’s Cobham Hall in July 1828.

‘Today I diligently helped clear a few new vistas through the brush, to which everyone lent a hand.’ This is something Jane Austen left out: the gentlemen in their shirt sleeves, the ladies in… what, I wonder? Pinafores? And where did the sons of toil fit in? Did they set to, competing to impress with their brawny bending, or watch from the wings, concealing their giggles, or pitch the branches on a bonfire? Did the cider-flagon go round the party, ending with a shanty and a jig, or did they practise social distancing?

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Trad? Who’s he?

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.

Hugh’s Gardening Books

Trees

Trees was first published in 1973 as The International Book of Trees, two years after The World Atlas of Wine….

Hugh’s Wine Books

World Atlas of Wine 8th edition

I started work on The World Atlas of Wine almost 50 years ago, in 1970. After four editions, at six-year…

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