'A dinosaur? You aren't THAT old.....?' ... but it sometimes feels like I am the last of a once widespread species, clergy who are gardeners. Maybe you've never thought such things existed, but we just don't make a lot of noise.
Do you like roses? Hybrid musk roses are famous for huge trusses of flowers that make a real show: they were first bred by Revd Joseph Pemberton, an early 20th century Essex clergyman who eventually ran a nursery selling 40,000 roses annually.
Maybe you like annual poppies, easy to grow from seed, in lots of different colours? Shirley poppies were bred by the Revd John Wilkes, Vicar of Shirley in Surrey in Victorian times.
Hardy Geraniums are always popular - maybe you grow the bright purple Geranium 'Ann Folkard'? Revd Oliver Folkard was a Vicar in Lincolnshire when I was there in the 1980s, breeding Geraniums and naming them after members of his family. I could list a dozen more.
So, what has happened to the clergy who are gardeners? A beautiful 1988 book 'The English Vicarage Garden' profiled 30 such gardens, but when you read the book even then only a minority of those were clergy cultivating their own garden at the time the book was written.
The National Garden Scheme 'Yellow Book' listing gardens open for charity shows plenty of 'Old Vicarage' gardens open, but not one garden is a currently occupied clergy house. If any of us are left, we are in hiding....!
So what has changed? The big clergy houses and gardens have been sold off and replaced with smaller modern properties. Clergy life is more pressured and the job more demanding: if the 'gardener/priest' is almost extinct, the 'scholar/priest' is not far behind! And finally... yesterday's clergy were often country people, brought up with a love of gardening and nature - today it's rare to find a country person working in rural ministry, most clergy are drawn from the cities and suburbs, and don't have the same sense of 'working their land'.
So that's me - I'm Chris, and I'm a priest who is a gardener - the son and grandson of gardeners, and the proud father of a fine horticulturalist. Welcome to my garden!
Meanwhile, out in the garden..... I'm working on an article on that much neglected shrub the Spiraea.
Largely ignored as dull background shrubs for supermarket car parks, Spiraeas offer a lot - well-behaved shrubs with flowering seasons from March until autumn, and some wonderful foliage effects as well.
As always the article will be illustrated from our garden here in France, and will combine plant ideas with a (slightly) thrilling story of plant rescues! Here is a taster: fine red flowers, and just look at the deeply textured leaves of this Spiraea japonica 'Crispa'. An unbeatable summer shrub. More Spiraeas soon!
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