Conserving Plantspeople

I’ve just spent an enjoyable weekend at the Royal Horticultural Society’s National Rhododendron Show at Rosemoor, a lovely garden here in the South West of England.

What a great show it has been this year! The show is always well supported, but in difficult years, horticulturally speaking, you tend to see the same stalwart species and varieties in each class. Not a hardship of course, but how much more exciting it is to see a big range of different things.

Camellias at the show

I was judging the camellias, but afterwards was delighted to walk around and take in the beauty.

Different Levels Of Enjoyment

What I love about these flower shows is the different levels at which people enjoy them.

Some people love to discuss the finer details of different species, and compare historical information about where and when plants were collected or raised.

Rhododendron Coronet Group, hybridised by Collingwood ‘Cherry’ Ingram

Other people just love to come and look at the flowers.

I consider both to be incredibly important. It’s actually really important for gardeners of all levels, including the experts, to step back and enjoy the flowers. I’ve found this particularly when I’m judging the camellias; my role as judge involves being very pedantic about marks and blemishes, but there wasn’t a single flower on the bench that I would not have loved to see in my own garden.

History And Heritage

Behind the rows of neatly arranged blooms there are stories.

Stories of gardeners – some famous, some less so – who have worked with plants in decades of even centuries past. Plant hunters who travelled to remote places in search of seeds to send home. Hybridisers who saw potential in certain plants and hybridised them so that we could enjoy bigger flowers, better colours, stronger constitutions, and in some cases better perfumes.

Known currently as Rhododendron Carclew No.3, work is underway to identify this old rhododendron variety

And then there are the other figures of the stories, generation after generation of gardeners who have acquired and grown these plants, and have passed them around so that other gardeners can benefit from them.

I find myself digging into the official registers of camellias and rhododendrons for research or interest, and I’m sometimes quite surprised by how long plants have been in cultivation, I was looking up an old camellia for someone called ‘Dewatairin’ and surprised to find that it was first published in 1695.

Just how old is Camellia ‘Bokuhan’?

Camellia ‘Bokuhan’, sometimes labelled ‘Tinsie’ in the US; this one was first published in 1719, but both Camellia ‘Dewatairin’ and Camellia ‘Bokuhan’ are likely to be much older plants. Two camellias that have been in cultivation for over 300 years and they’re still available from nurseries today!

Living History

For me there is something special about having a link with gardeners from the past, people who tended gardens but who are now commemorated by old stones in a cemetery and plants in the garden. 

I have a book on my shelves called Who Does Your Garden Grow, which gives the origins of around 100 different plant cultivars. 100 is an impressive number, but is a tiny fraction of the total number of people who have contributed to our gardens.

Rhododendron lindleyi was named for English botanist John Lindley, who also has the Lindley Library named for him

Names of great hybridisers live on in registers, but behind particularly the aristocratic plant breeders there were teams of gardeners like me who played small but instrumental parts in the creation of plants. Their names are lost to the trees, but growing old plants keeps the essence of their existence alive.

Conservation efforts focus on the protection of old plant varieties, yet there is something just as important that is in need of conservation.

The Plantsperson-Gardener

The craft of horticulture is changing, as it always has.

Gone is the era of the heavily controlled – and contrived – manicured gardens. You still see a few but they’ve become a symbol of a bygone era, replaced by informal gardens built along the post-Robinsonian New Naturalistic lines.

Modern gardening is heavily guided by ecology, and while I don’t deny that sound ecological practice should be at the core of what we do we are at risk of losing our plant-gardeners.

Good, many in the New Horticulture Movement will say.

But who will keep that horticultural heritage alive? Who will nurture a love of the plants that have been the foundation of gardening for so long?

In some ways modern horticulture is to be applauded for its embracing of new ideas, but there is a danger that we put so much effort into seeking a bright new future that we lose our connection with the past.

Magnolia ‘Miss Honeybee’ is still fairly new, so its origins are still known

Big old buildings have fairly good protections. Buildings of architectural or historical significance end up being protected for the good of society. Buildings have plenty of advocates.

But plants are living things. They’re easy victims of changing fashions, and there is an assumption even among the more considerate gardeners that the loss of a plant in one garden is not a problem because the plant will live on elsewhere. It’s a dangerous assumption; without knowing what everyone is growing it’s not unknown for plant varieties to quietly disappear completely.

These aren’t just flowers, they’re links with our gardening history

And this is why we should conserve the plant-gardeners. Plant enthusiasts will, if given space and security to do their thing, swap and share plants that are of interest to them. Nurseries won’t be interested but a few plants shared from the back of a car at a plant event could be enough to keep old plants, and their histories, alive for the future.

Long live specialist plant shows, and long live the plant nerds who gather for them!