Adam's Garden

This week I went to the BBC Gardeners' World Show at The National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. Shows of this type are being run a lot more slickly these days and it was very impressive. The only aspect that was a little disappointing was the relatively poor number of show gardens, and some of those were little more than simple arrangements of pots and ornamental objects.

The main attraction, however, was the incredibly long RHS floral marquee, filled with numerous large stalls, held by nurseries, and displaying exquisite plants, arranged with great skill to show both old favourites and new introductions at their best. All specimens are neatly labelled so enthusiasts can jot down any that catch eye, mainly with a view to acquiring the plant at a later date. Most stalls were also selling plants but I found that many of the better varieties had sold out, and in any case some of the larger varieties can be problematic to deal with in these circumstances, especially with the car parked some distance away. I have many lists squirreled away in drawers and files, all accumulated from past visits to shows and gardens, each detailing 'must have' plants. Occasionally I consolidate these lists and sort them alphabetically on the word processor, producing an ever increasing number of plants to buy. I sometimes visit nurseries which I know in advance sell the correct plants, and come away with plants I cannot remember ever having seen before, but if they are on my list I know I must like them!

So on this trip I used my head and took my camcorder. It proved a masterstroke because not only did it obviate the chore of tediously copying names onto paper but I could get excellent close ups of small flowers as well as panning shots and sound as we discussed what we thought were the merits, or otherwise, of the exhibits. In future my camcorder and I will be inseparable on such occasions! It is a little more bulky than one would wish but in time it will be cheap to buy a tiny palm-sized digital video recorder.

After progressing through the floral marquee for an hour or so it was like a breath of fresh air to come upon the best-in-show exhibit of a wild gorge in miniature. It skillfully replicated a waterfall spilling from a mountainside into a jungle lake below. There was not a flower in sight, just evergreens, dwarf firs, ferns, mosses, lichens and many more. Hundreds of hours must have been spent in the planning and execution of this masterpiece. It is such a shame that it had to be dismantled so soon - the show only lasted a few days.

Seeing this landscape in miniature got me thinking about how effective it was in producing an effect that in nature is relatively stable and unchanging throughout the year. An evergreen woodland scene, with no brightly flowering plants, will appear very similar in winter and summer, quite different to our garden which is a riot of colour and textures in summer but pretty bare in winter. Other than the lawn the only green visible comes from a few firs. In future I shall endeavour to plant more trees. As well as giving more permanence and form, trees can slowly alter the shape of garden, providing shady areas and natural shelter.

Not that I don't plant trees. On the contrary, I have over the years planted quite a number. On the whole my favourites have a reasonable shape and foliage, rather than flowers. The problem with aggressively flowering trees, like flowering cherries, is they aren't much cop for the rest of the year. We have a Hawthorn (Crataegus) 'Paul's Scarlet' which looks magnificent for two weeks a year and then fades into the background. Similarly, another variation, 'Rosea flore pleno', is a pink tint and flowers at the same time. These two are on a sunny bank together with a couple of transplanted wild Hawthorn and the group, complemented by a couple of beeches and a Rowan, makes a nice display. The wild Hawthorns crop well and I intend at some stage to sow the seed because there may be some interesting crosses between the types. Further along the bank is an Aspen (Populus tremula), quite common, especially in Colorado, but a magnificent tree nevertheless, with leaves that 'tremble' in the slightest breeze, and pleasant yellow autumn hints. I prefer this type of tree because it looks good all year round, even in winter.

I suppose the ideal tree would have spring flowers, highly ornamental leaves for summer, fruit, bright autumn colours, and a dramatic shape for the winter!! Maybe this can be achieved with the help of genetic modification. The hysteria sweeping the nation concerning GM is mainly directed towards the effects on humans consuming GM produce but it should also be of concern to gardeners because sooner or later horticulture will throw up some kind of Frankenstein's Foxglove or Pavlov's Petunia. I am not in principle against genetic modification because this is in effect occurs in nature on an incremental level. For example, in a batch of Geranium seed there might be one that produces flowers that are more attractive than usual to pollinating insects. This plant will be more successful and produce more offspring, and so the species has, by the natural process of evolutionary genetic mutation, advanced. Similarly, if the plant produced a flower that was totally repulsive to pollinating insects, then it would fail to produce offspring and the new strain would die out. Natural selection is ruthless but efficient in this regard. There is one corollary to this however. In the second case, the pollinating insects may not be interested, but a nurseryman might spot the new plant - it may be unattractive to a bee but dazzling to the human eye. Now he will naturally pick out the specimen with a view to a fast buck and endeavour to propagate it, firstly by cuttings, to produce identical copies, and then he will try to improve it by crossing with other Geraniums.

There has been a subtle shift from insects to mankind as a means of advancing the species in this particular instance, and cannot be regarded as retrograde - after all, at some stage the Geranium evolved to rely on insects, now our specimen has gone one stage further to rely on mankind. We have been at this game for years, continually crossing wheat for higher yields, for example, and bringing out more varieties of Fuchsia than one could imagine.

The difference with genetic modification now is the direct method employed. Why keep crossing two nearly blue roses until you get a true blue when the same effect can be achieved with one injection? This is obviously a gross simplification but I use it to serve a point. Using science, shortcuts can be made, and as long as we fully understand what we are doing there can be no objection. A rose gene into a rose, nature can do that, but a jelly fish gene into a tomato?! What next? A dog gene into Diascia so it whines when needing a drink? A halibut gene into Hibiscus so it can live underwater? I exaggerate, obviously, but the point I am making is that once we delve into transgenic modification that strays into areas involving totally unrelated species like jellyfish and tomatoes, then how can we possibly know the long term consequences? No doubt we will find out, but by then it may be too late.

I am glad these matters are for the future. In the meantime I am off to water my Salpiglossis!

Happy gardening.

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