Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 20, 1994 TAG: 9403010171
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARGARET ROACH NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In between the lengthening blinks of that nodding, midafternoon dream state, something catches my eye, something (at last) that is not a plant at all. Perhaps 50 feet away, in the grassy aisle between two neatly edged flower beds, a man appears, his demeanor nervous, and he looks all around him as if to ensure he is alone.
Satisfied that he is - I, apparently, am out of his line of sight - he raises his eyes to gauge the sinking sun's position, and as quickly as he finds it, pivots slightly in adjustment and then falls to his knees, all in one smooth, well-practiced motion. The movements that come next are also second nature to him, and I realize that he is a Muslim, and that this is the five-times-daily prayer that must be performed in a ritually clean place.
The Cambridge Botanic Garden is such a place to this devout man, and in my increasingly awakened state I realize it is a place of worship for me, too - 300-plus years of garden history, a fertile crescent of my own botanical faith. And so it happened on a recent afternoon that we prayed together, each in our way expressing appreciation for the creation of such a spot.
Only three times before in my life have I been so visually staggered: The year that the Mona Lisa was in New York, in temporary residence at the Metropolitan Museum; on a trip to Madrid's great museum, El Prado, when I walked through a whole haunting gallery of El Grecos; and my first glimpse of the Winged Victory - headless and armless, but overpoweringly beautiful nonetheless - floating above the grand staircase in Paris' Louvre.
Each time, I could think of nothing to do in reaction but to cry.
The gardens of England are that good, and that strong. Bring your handkerchief, and a comfortable pair of shoes.
Come to think of it, bring your nerve, too, for if the truth be told last summer I experienced two weeks of heaven and hell: 32 of the world's great gardens, punctuated by 1,500 miles of hard time hurtling down the wrong side of the road in a car that could fit into the bed of my pickup truck. It was a trip so sweet and also so taxing that I cannot recommend it strongly enough - nor warn against trying any such itinerary. Instead, then, I share the best-of, the hits of my total immersion in the land where it is not the royal family, I discovered, but the garden that reigns supreme.
The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in the London suburb of Richmond, is a logical starting place for the garden-seeker. Its 300 acres and 30,000 different types of plants form a course in botany so comprehensive it would take a lifetime to complete, so I will have to settle for a half-day walk.
Here it is that I jump-start, and then test, my plant-identification skills, falling back on the luxury of the conspicuous engraved labels. It is a luxury I'm sure to miss once I'm out beyond Kew's gates roaming the countryside, in the kind of gardens where labels are apt to be fewer.
Yes, it all looks familiar; I know these plants. Or do I? The maplelike leaves look right, and yes, I know those hibiscus-shaped flowers, but can that green and purple hummock the size of a Volkswagen beetle really be a Lavatera - a plant that I would be lucky to grow as a puny annual before frost killed it dead? Perfect thigh-high hedges of lavender, and roses that grow so tall and wide that one would obscure the whole facade of my house - all of it is wildly out of scale with gardening as I know it.
Did this whole land have an overdose of fertilizer, or live under a protective, heated bubble in winter? Am I in England, or California?
At Sissinghurst Castle, near Cranbrook, Kent, the garden of all gardens. I get the sense I am inside a kaleidoscope, and someone keeps turning the mechanism so the tint shifts again and again. Sissinghurst is a garden of ``rooms'' - quite separate gardens within the garden made distinct by high hedges or walls - each one with a color theme. I pass the purple border, and a whole gleaming room of white and white alone, and on to the best of all: the cottage garden, a hot-colored study mixing plants with flowers (or sometimes foliage) of red and orange and yellow. I am dizzied.
Inside my imaginary kaleidoscope, all the bits of color are shaking, but this development is not part of the garden plan laid out by Vita Sackville West and her husband, Harold Nicholson, who began rethinking this historic landscape in the 1930s. I realize it is just that I am being jostled by the crowds, for though only a certain number are allowed entry at any time, there are too many of us to allow for standing still and simply looking.
At Powis Castle - our little car has made it all the way to northern Wales - there is room to find some time alone, to contemplate. How small I feel, and how temporary, in the looming shadow of a red hulk of a fortress begun in 1200, perched atop a 450-foot-high series of hanging terraces blasted into the rocky hillside about 1700. On each level is a garden, one more wonderful than the last.
``Slaves,'' my companion whispers, looking up at the whole feat of defiant engineering once we are at the bottom. ``Many, many slaves.''
And oh, the evergreen gumdrops: Once formal sentinels kept closely clipped, they have been allowed to swell to grandiose and somewhat motley proportions over the years that actually match the castle and the whole extravagant layout quite well. How do you prune shrubs so big, and so precariously positioned, hanging as they do right over the precipice? Apparently it is a matter of the gardeners ascending giant ladders - and bringing their lunch along when they climb up, for one round-trip commute a day on such a ladder is quite enough.
At Hidcote Manor, in Gloucestershire, I am back to being seduced by color, lost in the fiery red border for a while, and then in the little sanctuary called Mrs. Winthrop's Garden, where all is gleaming yellow. The backdrop: a hedge of purple beech, trimmed into a severely, hard-edged shape like a wall, its deep burgundy leaves in startling contrast to all that botanical sunshine.
By this time, I have become not only better at judging the road but also the guidebooks, which can mislead, too. The likes of Hidcote and Sissinghurst are always recommended, and rightly so, but had I gone by the books alone, I would have missed some of the best there is to see. Without a little help from a friend I would have failed to see how architect Harold Peto assembled a collection of classical Italian relics on an impossible hillside in Wiltshire, and among them made the mysterious garden called Iford Manor.
by CNB