Friends' News January 2014

Boswallia viscosa by Howard Rice

Friends’ News Juliet Day

Orchid Festival: 3-28 February

Cymbidium hybrids will feature strongly The orchid is a symbol of beauty and elegance in many societies and indeed, many equatorial countries have adopted particular species as national flowers. But this belies much of the gritty biology and deceptive techniques exhibited by this large and diverse family of plants. They grow worldwide, from the cold tundra of northern Sweden to the tropical forests of the Amazon, and include both terrestrial and epiphytic species. The Victorians coveted these beauties as rare and collectible prizes, yet in recent years, developments in propagation techniques have made the moth orchid (Phalaenopsis) a supermarket staple and ubiquitous houseplant. The orchid’s presence in the home is not limited to decoration: vanilla essence derives from the seedpods of the orchid Vanilla planifolia, and is not only an

extremely valuable commodity but was also the £1 million-winning answer for the first champion of Who wants to be a millionaire?!

From 3-28 February, we will be rediscovering the exotic allure of the orchid with a special display in the Glasshouse Range. This will focus on the orchids of the Indian state of Sikkim in the foothills of the Himalayas. A pair of orchid trees laden with orchids from the cool slopes and hot valleys of Sikkim will be constructed in the corridor and central Tropical Rainforest display respectively, while orchids from around the globe will be woven throughout the Glasshouse plantings. The Tropical Wetlands house will focus on orchid anatomy and adaptations, with the centrepiece a spider’s web of Vanda orchids, suspended from the roof.

The orchid flower has caught the attention of botanists, writers and artists alike, but more inspiring even than its beauty is its relationship with pollinators. One of the most celebrated examples is that of the Madagascan orchid, Angraecum sesquipedale var praedicta. Its long spur, which holds a small amount of nectar at the base inspired Charles Darwin to predict that it must be pollinated by a moth, then undiscovered, with an unprecedentedly long proboscis able to reach its sugary reward. Darwin was widely ridiculed for suggesting a moth could have a 35cm proboscis but his supposition was confirmed with the discovery of Xanthopan morganii var. praedicta in 1903.

Orchids face many threats in the wild, which will be highlighted in the Continents Apart House. One such example is the East Anglian fen orchid (Liparis loeslii), the subject of a conservation and reintroduction project that staff at the Garden are working on.

We are indebted to Simon Pugh–Jones and the students of the Writhlington School Orchid Project for their help in developing these themes and displays. Students from this award-winning conservation and engagement project, based in Bath, will be working with our Garden staff to deliver orchid propagation sessions for secondary school students during the Festival.

Alex Summers, Glasshouse Supervisor, and Juliet Day, Development Officer

Date for the diary: Make sure Saturday 17 May is in the diary for Festival of Plants, a day of popup plant science, the plant nursery promenade, ask the gardener, stand-up science, tours of the Garden with the experts, and a great deal more.

Angraecum sesquipedale

Oncidium sphacelatum Friends’ News – Issue 94 – January 2014

Welcome

A new role in 2014 – from Cambridge to the Royal Horticultural Society Juliet Day

Director of Wisley (1946–1951) to take up his Directorship here. Since then, many other trainees and staff have gone on to take up further training positions and full-time posts with the RHS.

I’m writing this welcome piece at the end of an astonishingly busy and successful year for the Garden. Six months into the new job I have a better idea of how things work, and an even greater respect for the amazingly dedicated and skilled staff. The autumn saw the revival of Apple Day, which was a great success despite the best efforts of the weather, and the installation of the new pergola at the western end of the Glasshouse Range.

Looking back at 2013, I’m also very pleased to report that the Garden has welcomed its highest ever number of visitors in a calendar year.

When this reaches you we will be busy preparing for our February Orchid Festival. Look out in the Glasshouses for the steady arrival of more and more of these amazing plants from the end of this month: did you know that in many orchid species the ovary twists 180 degrees during development, so that what you think is the top of the flower is actually the bottom?

Our Marketing and Development Officer, Juliet Day, has been very busy in 2013 with an oral history project. Voicing the Garden is a collection of recordings of the memories of people who have worked in the Garden, lived in the Garden or simply enjoyed visiting the Garden, over the last 60 years. You are invited to contribute to the project – find out more in the centre spread feature.

A very big change to life in the Garden happens in March this year. After nearly 17 years our Curator, Dr Tim Upson, is moving on to take up the post of Director of Horticulture at the Royal Horticultural Society. We will miss Tim’s experience and expertise very much, but are also very proud that the RHS has recognised Tim and his work here in Cambridge in this way. I am sure you will all join me in wishing him great happiness and success in his new role.

Professor Beverley Glover, Director

Friends’ News – Issue 94 – January 2014

It feels strange after nearly 17 years here to be writing about other gardens and another organisation. But sometimes opportunities and change happen when you least expect it, and I find myself moving on to take up the post of Director of Horticulture of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in March this year. I hope this will be the start of a new relationship with Cambridge both for me and our organisations as we have much in common. As it happens we already had a meeting on collaboration booked for the end of the month.

History also highlights how close this relationship has been. The current RHS Director of Horticulture, Jim Gardiner, was a trainee horticultural technician in Cambridge during the early 1970s, joining as a sandwich year student from Askham Bryan College. His recollections of his year in Cambridge have been captured as part of our oral history project, Voicing the Garden (see centre spread). He will be taking on a new role of Executive Vice President and acting as an ambassador for the RHS. Perhaps most famously, John Gilmour, Director of this Garden 1951 – 1973 moved from his post as

Cory Library News Welcome to Jenny Sargent who joined as Library Manager in late October.

Previously librarian at Wolfson College, Jenny takes on responsibility for the Cory Library, one of the Garden’s key and most important collections. It is used widely by staff to help curate and understand the living plant collections and is a wonderful research resource, particularly for plant taxonomy and systematics. After some years without a manager, initial work is concentrating on curating the library and in due course we hope to make the collection more accessible.

The RHS today is a very different organisation.

Their flagship garden at Wisley, acquired in 1908, has been joined by three others: Rosemoor in Devon; Hyde Hall near Chelmsford in Essex; and, Harlow Carr just outside Harrogate, North Yorkshire. Plans are advanced to build a new urban garden, an exciting opportunity to address issues such as local food production and the importance of plants in urban environments for us and for wildlife.

My responsibility will not be for the direct running of each garden but for their horticultural standards – an opportunity to take them forward with the current staff.

Other responsibilities will include the trials programme, amongst the most important work of the RHS. From these come recommendations for the Award of Garden Merit (AGM), highlighting some of the best performing plants for the garden. The RHS is also one of the lead organisations for Horticulture Matters, an initiative advocating the importance of horticulture and the need to encourage more people to take it up as a career. And before anyone else asks – I have no responsibility for tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show!

I am sure – and hope – this won’t be my last contribution to the Friends’ News and whilst it is with sadness I will be leaving Cambridge, I hope it will also mark the start of a new partnership.

Dr Tim Upson, Curator and Deputy Director

From root to tip

Green shoots from SAPS School biology departments around the UK received a shot of green late last year when a vibrant plant science poster arrived for display.

Based in the Botanic Garden, Science and Plants for Schools is an innovative education programme supporting plant science teaching in schools and colleges across the UK. As part of our work to introduce students to the breadth of contemporary plant science research, this year we devised and sent a free poster to every 6th form biology department in the UK this year – 4500 posters in total.

The poster offered students a new insight into the importance of photosynthesis set in the context of research taking place both here at Cambridge and around the world. It focuses on the ambitious attempts to breed rice that

The Shiba Gallery at the Fitzwilliam Museum plays host to a new exhibition of watercolours from the Fitzwilliam’s outstanding collection of botanical art.

It draws on over 300 years of work by both professional and amateur artists, tracing a history of flower painting in Britain and showing how artists have depicted plants and flowers in glorious detail as both botanical specimens and as part of artistic set pieces. The show includes works by many well-known and influential artists, including Georg Dionusius Ehret, who settled in Britain in 1736, and William Henry Hunt. These are displayed alongside recently acquired pieces by contemporary artists such as Margaret Stones and Rebecca John.

can make more efficient use of the carbon dioxide in the air, allowing faster growth and more abundant harvests. Scientists hope that this could have substantial benefits for farmers in the developing world.

The posters were designed to be lively and attention-grabbing for a teenage audience, with bright colours and a contemporary feel to them. The posters were accompanied by an online article by science writer and Botanic Garden guide, Stephen Day. A second poster, covering some of the latest research going at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Cambridge, will be sent into 6th forms in spring 2014.

For more information visit www.saps.org.uk

From Root to tip: botanical art in Britain runs from Tuesday 28 January to Sunday 11 May 2014. Admission to the Fitzwilliam Museum is free, please check www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk for opening times.

Harriet Truscott, SAPS Communication Officer

Enthusiastic A-level biology students at the Jewish Community Secondary School in London

Sycopsis sinensis – an unusual plant for late winter interest The witch hazel family, Hammelidaceae, includes many plants that provide winter interest. Perhaps the best known are the witch hazels themselves with their delightful spidery flowers which are often well scented. Several are grown in the Winter Garden including H. x intermedia ‘Jelena’ with particularly attractive copper flowers. Another relative is our remarkable tree of Parrotia persica, the Persian ironwood, which is sited on the eastern side of the Systematic Beds. Well known for the bunches of red stamens produced in February on bare twigs, it is the interlocking branches in the crown (due to natural grafting) which make this tree a rather special specimen.

A more unusual member of the family to look out for is Sycopsis sinensis, of which there are two mature plants along the Lynch Walk of peonies and geraniums, and close to the entrance to the Schools’ Garden. A neat evergreen shrub, the globular buds open to produces clusters of dangling stamens, usually in late February and March. Our two plants perhaps illustrate the range in colour variation

Marcus Harpur

Paeonia suffruticosa, 1815, Lucy Cust Sycopsis sinensis

that can be found. The larger plant growing in the actual border bears the typical yellow stamens, whereas the free-standing specimen across the path has yellow stamens that are flushed red towards the base. For those looking for an unusual plant to grow, this one deserves to be more widely planted and was one of the plants featured in the January issue of RHS Garden. The article on unusual shrubs for winter interest featured both our own Winter Garden and was illustrated with cut material taken from around the Botanic Garden.

Our plants of Sycopsis have even more interest and value as our accession books of 1905 reveal they came from the famous nurseryman, James Veitch & Sons of Chelsea.

The entry which lists 87 plants begins with ‘Group of Chinese plants which may be of special interest for report’. The Veitch nursery sponsored many plant hunters to supply new and exciting plants for sale including Ernest ‘Chinese’Wilson who collected in Asia on their behalf. Our plants of Sycopsis are almost

certainly from Wilson’s original collection made in 1901 (Veitch exped. No. 1825) in Western Hupeh, Central China. So our plants of Sycopsis are not just an attractive and interesting part of our collections, but part of the UK’s heritage of plants brought back to our gardens by the great plant hunters.

Dr Tim Upson, Curator and Deputy Director Friends’ News – Issue 94 – January 2014

Voicing the Garden Juliet Day has put together some highlights from the new Voicing the Garden website and invites you to join in with the project by sharing your recollections of the Garden.

Voicing the Garden has been an intense one-year project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Cambridge University Botanic Garden Association for staff alumni, to collect, celebrate and share the stories of the people behind the plants. The resulting archive of over sixty interviews is a rich mix of inside tracks, personal meanings, conflicting viewpoints, loves, loathes, life changing experiences, characters and recollections. What is striking is how rich and diverse these unofficial histories are, the opposite of an authoritative guide book. Voicing is where we can now remember the singed mallard put up when students set fire to the Lake by igniting the gas released on pulling up waterlilies during the ‘76 drought; the black market in eels and duck eggs; the daughters of a former director jumping their ponies over the winter garden hedges; EM Forster coming to tea and not being remotely interested in the plants but becoming besotted with the pet goat; the ‘slow bicycle race’ at staff parties; the 1950s Glee Club, which all horticultural trainees had to attend on a weekly basis; the schoolgirls who weeded the Garden during the war and then grew up to bring their own grandchildren; and, the parents who have celebrated and grieved here.

Scattered here are just a few tasters from the project website at voicingthegarden.com.

Under Voices you will find a starter selection of the interviews with staff and visitors to enjoy, with much more to come once editing is complete. The Shorts section hosts films from the archives but also some new commissions inspired by the Voicing project and undertaken in collaboration with the Cambridgeshire Film Consortium. King’s Hedges Primary School have produced a delightful animation to

accompany Mike Rowan remembering Tony Offley, the man who could tame robins, and talented young film-maker, Nikki Driscoll, has brought to life the day that a poodle pushed alpine supervisor, Harold Langford, too far. Students at creative arts charity, Squeaky Gate, have composed, performed and filmed Stress Re-Leaf, a music video that sheds a totally new light on the balm and beauty the Garden can offer, while the Cambridge Super8 Club have spliced the contemporary and archive to produce a surreal-tinged work, inspired by the words of 1950s trainee, Mick Verlander. We have also posted up here, with apologies to Pirandello, audioclips in search of a filmmaker. Do get in touch if you or perhaps your students would like to contribute.

Rummaging in the Archive section is a joy – there are newspaper clippings from the Cambridge News, old guide books and photographs, maps plans and aerial views.

The last phase of the Voicing website has now gone live, meaning that you too can become part of the Voicing story of the Garden. On the Memory Board, you can upload your own recollections and motivations for visiting the Garden, and you can pinpoint your favourite spots in Map your Love. We know that the Garden can be a creative inspiration for many, so we have gathered short stories, poems and artwork together and shared it under the Anthology section. If you would like some creative writing guidance, we have persuaded published writers to contribute some wise words and exercises under the Words section – why not try one out next time you are in the Garden? And finally, let us know what you think of the project and website in the Visitors’ Book section.

How to join the Voicing story I Go online at www.voicingthegarden.com and upload your reminiscences of visiting, your creative work, your photos, your thoughts

I Fill in the postcard enclosed with this Friends’News with your memories of favourite visits and drop it back to us – or send it on to a friend who you know has something to say.

I If you’ve got more to write, you will find Voicing the Garden letterhead in the Café – fill it up with your thoughts, fold up like an old-fashioned aerogramme and drop it back to the ticket offices.

Norman Villis retired in the mid 1990s as Garden Supervisor after more than 40 years at the Garden: I was knocked out when I came here – the trees, the woodland, the Systematic Beds which I just couldn’t believe were laid out like they were and the people here all willing to exchange their knowledge if you asked them, right from the ornithologists that worked in the gardens, and that was absolutely marvellous. It had a lovely social side, it had the Glee Club, the social club, the cricket team, which was in the inter-lab league so we played places like engineering and chemical and who very often had blues in the team – we’d say, look out we’re going to get a hammering here – we could supply a 5 a-side side football team, rounders. We had a Walkerian meeting once a month, and with John Gilmour’s contacts in the hort trade – he was a bigwig in the RHS – we got speakers down who were very eminent in their field to give us a talk, perhaps like Harold Hillier, a very famous nurseryman, or Alan Bloom, another nurseryman, all those sort of people came and gave us talks, and I just couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe the atmosphere.

Dr Sheila Shinman visited as a schoolgirl, and volunteered to help weed the Garden during the Second World War, when many staff had been called up to serve: Mr Preston was very clever because the first job he gave me was to weed the nettle bed.

That’s not taking nettles out of the bed, it was to weed the bed that was full of particular and different types of nettles. And I think he realised that if I stuck at that, aged 13, I was likely to stick at something else!

I Use the #vtg if instagramming at the Garden

I Or email your contribution to voicing@botanic.cam.ac.uk Friends’ News – Issue 94 – January 2014

To listen to the full interviews, visit voicing

Jemima Atkinson remembers the relief of being able to visit the Garden with her husband, John: I think John was bonded with nature. He loved the birds, and he liked watching the ducks on the Lake, and the flowers, and he would notice when things were out and not out, which was amazing... He got very restless at home, too, so if I could take him out and he could walk a bit, that helped.

We were only allowed to go one way, which was straight from the gate into the Glasshouses. We walked through the Glasshouses and he always looked at certain plants and through certain doors.

He loved the rainforest one, and he loved the fuchsias; then we would go off and have coffee in the Gilmour Building, then we would walk round past the fountain and sit there for ages and he would fall asleep, and I felt no-one worried about what he did, because people with dementia do do odd things and say odd things… but nobody seemed to mind, which was wonderful... And when he died I thought you would all be thrilled, that this boring man who was always trying to go through doors which were closed… and everybody said ‘No, because we could see how much you loved each other, and how lovely he really was’, and I thought, ‘Goodness, why can’t our friends see that?

They all left. We lost all our friends, because John was funny, wasn’t he?

One of the UK’s foremost planstmen, Roy Lancaster (second from left) trained at the Garden from 1959: The foreman in charge of the Systematic Beds was a man called Ron Rule, a tall, lean, long-legged man who used to amaze us by jumping over in succession all the hedges like a thoroughbred from Newmarket; he would run up and leap over each hedge in turn, and reckoned he set a record for doing all the hedges from start to finish.

Lucy Rowley trained with the Garden last year, before going to the Chelsea Physic Garden: To work with plants from around the world within this tiny little hub is incredible, getting to see all these plants you wouldn’t ordinarily see from the jungles, and deserts, is just wonderful.... Actually I don’t get approached by visitors as much as I’d like, because I just love talking about plants... There’s a particular couple who must come four or five times a week, and they always come over and say hi. They call me ‘slave’ actually, which I find very amusing: ‘Hello, slave, what have you been up to?’They’re really fun, and you can tell they just really, really enjoy going round the Garden; no matter how many times they’ve been round before, they obviously get something from it each time.

CUBGA member, Roy Jones, on developing the eastern Garden: I came to Cambridge with many others who had just completed National Service and our first job was on the Development Gang. We transformed allotments into the New Area, ploughed, stone picked and seeded. Bob Younger used his car, a Lancaster, to mark out the paths. Dr Max Walters was constructing a geographical flora for the British Isles. One place had not been visited – the Wash. So, one weekend a small group of us decided we would set off for Norfolk. To make it interesting, we would go in pairs and have a hitch-hiking race to Swaffham. On the Sunday morning we went onto the marshes – then we found out why no one else had botanised the area. We rolled up our trousers and entered the black mud!!

David Way was taken on as an ‘improver’ in the Glasshouse Range for 18 months in 1948: In today’s modern world with its many technological advances, most people will not realise that the Glasshouse Range was heated by a Victorian system. No thermostats, no motorised valves, no electric pumps to aid and control the circulations.

And the heat source? A giant coke-fired boiler, which demanded manual skills to maintain the appropriate rate of burning which is basically the only way of controlling the heat and of course this demanded regular attention at various intervals during the 24-hour period. Staff and students, including myself had to be prepared to go on the rota for boiler duty. Woe betide anyone who let the fire out… Another skill was how much ventilation to give where and when, and shading. So the glasshouse range was totally managed to get the different climes by manual skill, judgment and dexterity and the capacity to shovel tonnes of coke into this volcanic monster...

Of course you shovelled all those tonnes in and then you had to shovel out all the final waste product, all the ash and the clinker.

Mike Pollock, trainee in 1959, borrows the label making kit: I got hold of the gear and I wrote a label out, and coined a plant myself which was Telegraphicus telgraphicoides, family Telecommunicaceae, found throughout the British Isles, provenance GPO, and I appended this, believe it or not to a telegraph pole going up through a few trees, and it caused a great deal of consternation, and John Gilmour got to hear about it and enjoyed it very much.

Thank you from Juliet This project would not have been possible without the enormous support and encouragement of many Botanic Garden members of staff, the amazing energy and commitment of the volunteer interview team and project administrator, Rosemary Seeney.

I am indebted to all our contributors and collaborators, especially to Trish Shiel and Ryd Cook at the Cambridgeshire Film Consortium, to Chris Elliott at Cambridge Newspapers, and to the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Cambridge University Botanic Garden Association.

gthegarden.com/voices. You can also download the interviews to an mp3 player to accompany you on your next visit!

Friends’ News – Issue 94 – January 2014

Horticulture What role can a Botanic Garden have in conservation?

With many species of plant in Britain declining or under threat of extinction reintroduction may seem an attractive option, but it’s not simple. All sorts of issues must be addressed before reintroducing a plant to a site: do we know why the thing went extinct there and have things changed so that it won’t just die out again? And is it really extinct there or have we not looked hard enough? Is what we have in cultivation the same thing that went extinct?

The Garden is currently involved in two reintroduction attempts.

Interrupted brome, Bromus interruptus, is a weedy grass of farmland, endemic to Britain (probably derived by mutation from soft brome, B. hordaceus, since you asked!). Don’t be put off by the ‘weedy’, it is actually kinda cute, especially in seed. It’s a winter annual, germinating in the autumn and flowering the

Clippings & Cuttings

I Visitors will no doubt have noticed large areas of bare scratched up earth in the formal lawns. These have been caused by an infestation of chafer grubs, which feed on the turf roots just below the surface.

Magpies, crows, woodpeckers, badgers and foxes all find the grubs irresistible and dig down to gobble them up, resulting in ruined areas of lawn. We have applied a biological nematode to control the chafer grubs, and will be reseeding the affected areas this spring. We will also be undertaking an intensive programme of lawn maintenance to encourage a healthier and deeper-rooted turf less vulnerable to reinfection.

Pete Stroh

One thing we can do is use our horticultural skills and facilities to grow stocks of threatened plants for reintroduction into the wild. It helps that we have a range of partners who can look at the conservation issues, allowing us to concentrate on the horticulture.

following summer. It is very much a Cambridgeshire plant, first recorded in in 1849 at Odsey on the county border with Hertfordshire, and last seen in the wild in 1972 at Pampisford. We’ve been working with Ashley Arbon, a farmer in Whittlesford, and Dr Peter Stroh of the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland to see if we can get a population established on a field margin. To this end we went out last autumn, watched the margin being ploughed then scattered about 5,000 seeds of interrupted brome in its wake. We went back later and were delighted to see lots of seedlings - we’ll have to actually count them at some point but a rough guess would be a couple of thousand. Success!!! Now we have to see whether they’ll grow and seed a new generation next autumn.

Lathyrus palustris

Pete Michna broadcast sowing Norman Sills, is looking at the rare plants which were lost from the site when it was originally drained. He got marsh pea seed from a nearby RSPB reserve where it still thrives, and we have spent a couple of years growing plants for him.

I’m hoping to go out and help plant them this spring, and while we await a successful reintroduction, you can come and look for the marsh pea in the Botanic Garden Fen Display.

Our other species is the marsh pea, Lathyrus palustris, a scrambling, perennial pea of reedy fens which is declining due to fen drainage and the loss of traditional management techniques.

In the mid-1990s, the RSPB began to reestablish fen at Lakenheath, an old site for marsh pea. Now that the reeds are established and bitterns are again booming, retired warden,

Pete Michna, Experimental Section Supervisor

great number of candelabra Primula grown from seed and bulked up behind the scenes over the two year period of this renovation.

I Healthy Herbie, the person-shaped bed displaying plants used in licensed medicines is being streamlined to improve the clarity of the interpretation, the impact of the display and ease maintenance. Over the coming months, plantings of Galanthus sp (snowdrop), Narcissus pseudonarcissus (daffodil) Leucojum aestivum (spring snowflake), all of which have high levels of galantamine, will present the story of how this chemical is used in dementia treatments. Though galantamine cannot cure dementia, it can slow down the disease and help to ease symptoms. It works by increasing the amount of a natural chemical in the brain called acetylcholine which is known to be lower in people suffering dementia.

Friends’ News – Issue 94 – January 2014

Sally Hughes

Juliet Day

I The stream on the north side of the Woodland has now been repaired and we hope the lawn reseeding will have taken in time to allow youngsters (of all ages!) to look again for the frogspawn that is usually deposited there in spring. The Alpine & Woodland team are looking forward to replanting the south bank over the next few months with Iris sibirica varieties and a

2013 tree survey. The good news is that most of the large felling and reductions to the trees were carried out well ahead of winter-roosting bats and spring-nesting birds to avoid any displacement of wildlife.

The remaining works involve mainly dead wooding over footpaths and removing ivy to facilitate inspections and reduce wind loading. During the recent repeated strong gale force winds, damage to the tree collection was limited to two small limb tear outs, underlining the importance of actively managing the tree stock. The importance of regular inspections was borne out by the cross sections of some of the limbs and trunks removed, for example on the Caucasian wingnut (Pterocarya fraxinifolia) pictured, which were found to have seriously decayed or in some case no heartwood remaining at all. The next phase will be the completion of the remaining works identified under the tree survey, followed by stump removal and re-planting.

Galanthus atkinsii I The last few months have been very busy for the Trees and Shrubs section, who are now about two-thirds of the way through the 160 works highlighted by the summer

Hollow trunk of the wingnut

Education Twilight, highlights and festivals Head of Education, Flis Plent, gives us a round up.

I Arm yourself with a torch and get ready for this year’s Twilight adventure. On Wednesday 19 February, we’ll be joining in with museums and collections across the city for this annual event. Darkness and Deception will take you on a trail through the Glasshouse Range discovering the deceptive powers of plants on your torch-lit journey. Events across the city will run from 4.30pm to 8.30pm, and our Garden Café will stay open late until 8pm for essential re-fuelling of young explorers.

Admission is free and there are drop-in and bookable events across the City, so take a look at the full details on the website at www.cam.ac.uk/museums/twilight

I And finally, you’ll find a list of our adult courses for 2014 enclosed in this issue of the Friends’ News. We kick off the year’s botanical illustration courses with a focus on trees on 4 February with the brilliant John Wiltshire. Also coming up in the early part of this year is the start of a five-part garden history course and our Learn to Garden series of courses led by Head of Horticulture, Sally Petitt and our expert horticulture staff.

This year we have moved over to an online booking system for our courses and workshops so please have a look at the website at www.botanic.cam.ac.uk for full details of all the courses coming up and make your booking.

First Saturday Family Fun No need to book, just drop-in anytime between 11am – 3pm on the first Saturday of every month for plant-inspired fun. £3 per child, plus normal Garden admission for accompanying adults.

Feathered Friends Saturday 1 February Help feed the birds in your garden with our funky cupcake feeders and edible tree decorations.

Potty about Poppies Saturday 1 March Learn how to grow poppies from seed and make your own poppy seed paper.

Easter Treasure Saturday 5 April Collect clues on the Easter secrets trail and pick up some sweet treasure at the end.

I The theme for the University’s Science Festival this year is Patterns and Structures.

Alongside sessions running in schools, we’ll be launching a new garden trail in our Young Explorer backpacks which takes you on a Plant Pattern hunt. We are also running a ‘Patterns in Plants’ session on Wednesday 19 March for adults, exploring how patterns play a part in plant identification. The day includes a visit to the University Herbarium and tour of our Systematic Beds. For booking and full details visit the Science Festival website at www.cam.ac.uk/science-festival

Plants that Eat You Saturday 3 May Find out more about carnivorous plants and plant up a sundew to grow at home.

For the half-term and Easter hols…

Pen and inkwash study of Himalayan pine by John Wiltshire.

Hello from Bronwen Cambridge born and bred, I am excited to return to the city to take up the post of Schools Education Officer for the Garden. I have memories of visiting the Garden as a child growing up in Cambridge and was lucky enough to have a childhood in touch with nature, plants and the great outdoors. I hope to be able to provide similar positive experiences for others in my new role.

From the flatlands of Cambridgeshire I was lured to the mountains and coastline of North Wales to study for a Biology degree. During my time as a student at Bangor University I became heavily involved with Treborth, the University Botanic Garden and spurred on by threats of closure to the garden, founded a society to promote student and community involvement.

Thankfully it was successful and the society continues to do great work to this day. With an increasing interest in botany, I chose to focus my honours project on how botanic gardens can provide a route into scientific learning.

My interest in plants and education continued on graduating with the Field Studies Council at their day centre in Amersham, where I worked mainly with primary groups exploring local habitats, conducting mini-investigations and promoting environmental understanding.

From Amersham I returned to North Wales to work at the Field Studies Council centre in Snowdonia where teaching was more usually with older students of GCSE and A-level age and encompassed Ecology, Biology, Geography, adventurous activities, environmental education and sustainability.

I have been warmly welcomed into the Garden and feel privileged to work in such a beautiful setting. I am excited to have the opportunity to inspire the next generation of botanists and look forward to 2014 and all it brings!

Twilight: darkness and deception Wednesday 19 February, 4.30-8.30pm Discover the Glasshouse Range by torchlight. Free.

The Plant Pattern Hunt Available from 10 March Can you discover all of the plant patterns hidden in the Botanic Garden? Pick up an explorer trail from the Garden ticket offices and take a trip around the plant kingdom, collecting patterns as you go.

The trails are free, normal Garden admission cost for adults apply.

Garden Crafts for Kids Tuesday 15 April Author of 101 Things for Kids to do Outside, Dawn Isaac will be leading these inventive garden craft sessions for the Easter hols, including making and decorating a pooter to use for garden bug hunts and customising plant pots.

Bookable sessions at 10.15am, 11.30am, 1.30pm and 2.45pm. Children aged 5+. £5 per child plus admission for accompanying adults. Please telephone 01223 331875 to book.

Bronwen Richards, Schools Education Officer Friends’ News – Issue 94 – January 2014

Friends’ Events

Dear Friend

Volunteer Guides provided free taster tours at the autumn’s Apple Day, enjoyed by nearly 100 of our 2,500 visitors. We are delighted to be able to continue free Sunday afternoon tours in 2014. These will take place at 3pm on the first Sunday of the month in March, April, August, September and October, and every Sunday at 3pm in May, June and July. Tours are free for Friends and visitors; normal Garden admission charges apply. I would like to convey the gratitude of Garden staff to our volunteer Guides for their commitment and enthusiasm. During 2013 they provided 87 tours for over 2,100 visitors.

Friends’ outings this summer go to several National Trust properties, and to Great Dixter House and Garden in East Sussex. We were privileged to welcome Fergus Garret, Head Gardener at Great Dixter to give the Annual Lecture in November 2013. A highly entertaining and enthusiastic speaker, Fergus left the audience breathless with his

A booking form with full descriptions, details, times and prices is enclosed. All places will be allocated by ballot. To register for the ballot please complete and return the enclosed booking form by the given closing date.

Please take care to note the cancellation and refund policy outlined on the booking form.

inspirational gallop through the shape, colour, form and diversity that makes Dixter such a unique garden, and he has promised to look out for us when we visit in June.

Should outings be oversubscribed by the application closing date, places will be allocated by ballot. May I take this opportunity to thank Jenny Leggatt for her many years of voluntary work organising the Friends many and varied trips to inspirational gardens with the twin aims of fostering fellowship through shared interest and raising funds for the Garden! We are thrilled to welcome Gail Jenner to the committee.

Chartwell House & Garden NT and Emmetts Garden NT

Elizabeth Rushden

Change is on the way in the form of a new style of Friends membership card. Feedback has prompted the Garden to issue a plastic card to new and renewing Friends from 1 March 2014 to improve their resilience to life at the bottom of the handbag and/or frequent inadvertent cycles through the washing machine! However, due to the associated increased costs, the Garden will introduce a charge of £10 for replacing any lost or damaged cards from this date onwards. You are reminded of the need to bring your valid card with you on every visit to avoid being charged the normal admission fee.

Jenny Leggatt (left) with Emma Daintrey at her last Committee Meeting The Friends’ residential trip to the Italian Lakeland Gardens in May 2014, run in conjunction with Brightwater Holidays, is fully booked. A huge thank you is due to volunteer, Margaret Goddin, for organising another exciting holiday.

With best wishes to all our Friends.

Emma Daintrey Outreach Administrator

Thank you We are delighted to acknowledge the receipt of the first of two major gifts from Chris and Sarah Adams to support a new facility in the Schools’ Garden to be called the Geoffrey and Eileen Adams Garden Room in honour of Mr Adams’s parents. We will be able to share more news of this exciting project in the next issue of Friends’ News.

We are very grateful also to Kate Grillet and her family who have made possible the commissioning and construction of a new pergola at the western end of the Glasshouse Range through a generous donation towards the project in memory of Kate’s husband, Christophe Grillet. The pergola will be planted

up with grapevines in the spring to extend our plantings of Mediterranean crop plants here, which already feature olive, artichoke and pomegranate.

Thank you also to Helena Fasching for her gift in memory of her daughter, Laura; to Chris Nicholls and family, for their donation in memory of Dr Gaynor Thomas; and, to Jenny Leggatt who has further supplemented her donation in memory of Lee Skinner-Young for the Schools’Garden.

For more information on Giving in Memory and the difference it can make, please contact Juliet Day on 01223 762994 or jcd35@cam.ac.uk

Wednesday 28 May 2014 The gardens at Chartwell, the family home of Sir Winston Churchill, fall away in terraces behind the house down to lakes created by Sir Winston with a series of small dams. Lady Churchill’s rose garden and the Golden Rose Walk provided a lot of inspiration for Churchill’s paintings which are on display in the studio and open to visitors.

Emmetts Garden is an Edwardian estate owned by Frederic Lubbock. Influenced by William Robinson, the garden, which covers an area of about six acres, occupies a commanding site on a sandstone ridge overlooking the Weald. There are many exotic and rare trees, and this garden lends itself to glorious shows of spring flowers and shrubs.

Scotney Castle NT House & Gardens and Great Dixter House & Gardens Wednesday 18 June 2014 The gardens at Scotney are highly romantic and centre around a ruined 14th century castle. Cloud-like plantings of rhododendrons and azaleas create a fairytale feel, while the surrounding herbaceous beds provide colour throughout the seasons. The terrain is steep in places, so please take this into consideration when booking.

Great Dixter was the family home of iconoclastic gardener and gardening writer, Christopher Lloyd, who died in 2006. The gardens were originally designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in the Arts and Crafts style and retain much of that backbone, but Lloyd was never afraid to try something new.

When, in 1996, he wearied of the established rose garden, he replaced it with a brazen kaleidoscope of sub-tropical plants and sent shock waves through the gardening world.

Fergus Garret, Christo’s head gardener, has a similar outlook on planting, which is profuse and colourful, yet structured, and features many bold experiments in form and colour combinations.

Thoughts from the Garden Writer-in-residence, Kate Swindlehurst, will be in conversation with the Garden’s Juliet Day at the Words in Walden Spring Festival on Sunday 16 March, 2.30pm, in the Dame Bradbury School Theatre, Saffron Walden. Kate will be sharing her thoughts and experiences of how the Garden has inspired and infused her work. For tickets and further information, please visit hartsevents.co.uk Friends’ News – Issue 94 – January 2014

Scotney Castle