L I V E 2 4 -SE V EN
THROUGH THE GA RDEN GAT E THE COTSWOLDS
As the summer fades, our media horticulturalist, Camilla Bassett-Smith, heads to the heart of the Cotswolds and reflects on the horticultural impact of a local adventurer.
Look closely at your garden, the majority of plants have a story to tell, a story of their travels in history and time to arrive in the beds and borders of your creation. Natives are to be celebrated, but it is the world of flora from all parts of our globe which explorers have discovered and brought to our shores that form the basis of our horticultural havens.
Ernest Wilson was born in Chipping Campden in1876 and is no doubt one of the most celebrated plant hunters of all time. Spending time at Birmingham Botanical Gardens and Kew, it was when he went to work for the well-known nurserymen James Veitch & Sons that his trips abroad to find new plants began.
Years of plant collecting followed and by the time Wilson died in 1930, he had introduced around 1,200 species of trees and shrubs and collected over 100,000 herbarium specimens. He was often known as ‘Chinese’ Wilson due to his many visits to this area which proved rich in botanical treasure.
In the 1970s, to celebrate the centenary of Wilson’s birth, Sir Gordon Russell suggested a Gloucestershire garden be created in Wilson’s home town as a permanent memorial and it is here that I spent a rather warm, but cloudy, late summer’s afternoon.
Behind a wall, behind a gate and open since 1984, this sanctuary could easily be missed as you make your way along Chipping Campden High Street, however it is well worth a peek inside to discover a collection of rarities, all introduced by Wilson and all clearly labelled with love. (Anyone else singing a ‘Squeeze’ song here? No? Just me? Okay, I’ll be quiet and move on)!!
The bark of Acer griseum, the Paperbark Maple, was peeling away with pleasure to reveal the smooth, glossy, cinnamon trunk below and Prunus serrula nearby echoed the gleaming bark as if to try and out-compete its neighbour.
In later life Wilson walked with a limp, which he termed his ‘lily limp’. This was as a result of a bad leg break after a landslide following his discovery of fields of Lilium regale in the Min River Valley. This mass of fragrant white lilies was one of Wilson’s most exciting discoveries, what a sight and fragrant feast that must have been! (And certain solice for the leg injury to follow). Lilies have added their scent to
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