Sandy's Garden ... A Scottish Urban Garden

Country Gardens is an English folk tune collected by Cecil Sharp from the playing of William Kimber, arranged for piano in 1918 by Percy Grainger and subsequently adapted for many orchestral groups.
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The tune took on a new lease of life in 1957, when the American singer/songwriter Jimmie Rodgers released a recording of it with his own version of the words: ‘How many kinds of sweet flowers grow / In an English country garden? / We'll tell you now of some that we know / Those we miss you'll surely pardon / Daffodils, heart's ease and flox* / Meadowsweet and lady smocks / Gentian, lupine and tall hollihocks* / Roses, foxgloves, snowdrops, blue forget-me-nots / In an English country garden.’ (* His spelling.)

Jimmie Rodgers went on to enjoy a career as a singer of folk, traditional, pop, rock and roll and country music, with ‘English Country Garden’ reaching number 5 in the U.K. chart in June 1962. Readers as old as I am may also just recall another of his hits - ‘Kisses Sweeter than Wine’. Well, that brings us to the end of today’s mini-lesson in popular musical history. But it gives me an excuse to parody Rodger’s words thus: ‘How many kinds of flowers can you plant / In a Scottish urban garden? / I’ll tell you now of plenty that you can’t / Coronavirus is the reason; / Salvias and petunias, / Sweet Williams, phlox, begonias, / Bacopas, sweet peas, fuchsias, / Wallflowers and gazanias / In a Scottish urban garden.’

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With garden centres presently closed in a bid to curb the spread of Covid-19, plant nurseries are facing economic disaster. Yes, some supermarkets still have live plants for sale: but these are very much peripheral to their principal business activity as food stores, which is, of course, the reason that supermarkets are still trading. And those plants which are for sale in supermarkets are usually supplied by nurseries under contracts signed many months ago; the nurseries which supply vast numbers of plants to garden centres are full of young plants which can’t be delivered to their usual customers. There must also be real fears that local authorities who usually buy summer bedding plants by the million will cut back drastically this summer, perhaps because ground maintenance is reduced because staff are classified as doing non-essential jobs, perhaps because it’s not easy to maintain social distancing rules setting up dense beds of plants … and well-nigh impossible to transport men and materials to sites without having several men in the vehicle cab … or just possibly because the financial resources usually allocated to these tasks are urgently needed elsewhere in the budget. And don’t even think of the export markets usually supplied by British nurseries. Bad, bad news!

Falkirk Herald gardening guru Sandy SimpsonFalkirk Herald gardening guru Sandy Simpson
Falkirk Herald gardening guru Sandy Simpson

It’s always possible that the situation will be resolved quickly: but I’m not hopeful. Meantime, I have been spending more time just looking at my garden. The similarity between the silent plant killer – frost - and the silent viral threat to people - Covid-19 – remains valid. I wrote a coupe of weeks ago about my own thoughtlessness in exposing two tender young hydrangeas to frost and having to place them in intensive care. I can now report that, despite my best efforts, one has died while the other is, like Boris Johnson, making a slow recovery. Two other young hydrangeas which were kept in a frost-free environment are flourishing; and the moral is … ah, you’re ahead of me. My sheltered magnolia tree is covered in buds and promising to be glorious in a few days; my tulips have survived recent threatening winds and are bursting into bloom; my pansies, after a very slow start, are colouring up nicely; I’m glad that the contractor I employed to prune trees and shrubs to allow access to the men who renewed my soffits, fascias, downpipes and guttering trimmed all my trees and shrubs and disposed of the rubbish: but I don’t know if I’ll have much summer bedding. Sad, sad news!

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