Gardens and Empires
I am booked on a conference in a few weeks time with the title ‘Gardens and Empires’. It’s hosted at the British library:
“The histories of plants and gardens are deeply entangled with the histories of empires. This conference investigates the impacts of these global connections on gardens around the world. It investigates the influence of global networks of science, commerce and horticulture on the plants, designs and practices found in the gardens of European and non-European empires, at home and abroad.”
I feel I have so much to learn and I am hopeful that this will be a great opportunity, to learn. Once you start to unpack the history of so many of our plants, you begin to realise how they have been moved around the world to feed the passions of collectors and the coffers of trade.
The fallen Bald Cypress
This month’s plant story, which begins with a fallen Bald Cypress, is a case in point. Charles Joseph Bagieu became the owner of a small French chateau in 1798. He wanted to create a large English style parkland and needed trees, but not just any trees, trees that other chateau owners did not have. He also happened to supply Napoleon’s army with its provisions and had been loyal to the Emperor throughout his reign. So when Napoleon goes on his last expedition to Louisiana in America in 1802 he comes back with a Bald Cypress for his friend Charles Joseph Bagieu.
In Louisiana this tree, also known as the Swamp Cypress or to give it its Latin name Taxodium distichum, proved to be very lucrative for loggers. It was used to build the housing in New Orleans and the boats to navigate the swamps where the Bald Cypress were growing. But the trees had a significance to the native Americans too, in particular the Chitimacha tribe, who inhabited this area before the European settlers.
When Harvey Stern began to map the Bald Cypress that had been alive at the time of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 when the French sold the state to the Americans, he found many that pre-dated the sale, in fact they were hundreds of years old. The Chitimacha were approached to ask what these old trees should be called and the word Yaagi Niksta was chosen meaning ‘the strong spirit’.
In the conference there is a session called ‘The race for American trees’ I feel it could be relevant to our story.
We’ve come across the unravelling of these stories before, you might recall Penn’s Viburnum and the Offshoot episode with Vicky Aspin. Both Penn and Vicky had been intrigued by the life and work of Will Purdom, who had travelled to China in search of plants and it looks as though the conference will take us around the globe following the trail of plants.
In other podcast news I just wanted to update you on two recent episodes. The plants from Nigel Dunnett’s Hospitalfield Arts garden at RHS Chelsea have now travelled up the motorway and landed in the playground of Ladyloan primary school in Arbroath. Rachel the teacher I interviewed in the episode which you can listen to here, has sent me some photographs of small people with watering cans, tending to their new charges. The garden with its sand dunes and artists bothy will be assembled over the summer.
And if you heard the episode with Richard about Great Uncle Eric’s old seeds then you may like me have been wondering, did he, with the help of advice from Adam Alexander, manage to get any of them to germinate? Well I heard from him just yesterday saying “we have some sweet peas germinated. They’re just little spouts at the min, I’ve popped them in some pots and hopefully we’ll get some growth.” I will keep you posted!
I’m off to the Plant Heritage members weekend tonight. It’s being held at Thenford. I have never been before but I figure that 90 planty people gathered together will be fun.
Have a lovely weekend
Sally
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