This article is transferred from the author | Zhang Lushi
Once a grain-free me, I can often identify the variety of plants by looking at the leaves. Unconsciously, I also learned to feel the rhythm of the four seasons and the disposition of flowers and trees.
I remember that when I first started gardening, I always forgot to wear gloves to avoid mud on my fingers. But over time, I found that gloves are actually quite obstructive, and I prefer to directly grasp the soil with my hands to plant seeds. Until now, every time I hold the cold and delicate mud in the palm of my hand, I can still make me feel the indescribable tranquility of growing in the city. Caring for plants every day and observing the growth and circulation of flowers, leaves and seasons has become a meaning in life.
The truth is that the "meaning" of growing flowers and plants at home, whether concrete or abstract, should be mentioned by many people. If it were not for the second lockdown in England, the flower market would not have been included in the list of "necessities of life" along with the markets and supermarkets, and the doors would always be open. I remember the first lockdown in the UK in 2020 in the early spring, when more than 2,500 retail flower centres across the country were temporarily closed along with other "non-essential" shops. At that time, I read the news and learned that this caused a large number of flower seedlings and flowers cultivated by nearly 700 independent flower farmers in the country in the previous quarter in the first three weeks of the lockdown, which could not be sold out and could only rot silently.
But it was also in the same period that the British people in the panic hoarding, the enthusiasm for gardening also began to rise. During the lockdown period, although you can also go out every day to walk and exercise nearby, you still have to stay at home most of the time. I lived in a small building in London's Greenwich district with a small garden of ten square meters behind it. Maybe many people are similar to me, and at that time, they suddenly realized that pushing open the back door of the house is a place full of greenery, even if it is only the size of a square inch, it is outdoors after all. A private space that mimics nature, it turns out to be so precious.
A survey by Cardiff University shows that people with gardens at home or green spaces near their homes are more likely to calm down when faced with an anxious external environment. Perhaps because of this, according to the survey website Global Data, watching TV is the favorite thing for people in the UK during the epidemic, but the second most popular activity is "gardening". The age structure of gardening enthusiasts has also changed. In previous years, there have been several surveys showing that the average age of people in the UK who are willing to spend time on gardening is over 50 years old, but during the epidemic, a survey of 2,000 people between the ages of 18 and 34 initiated by a tool provider Draper Tools showed that 83% of them thought gardening was "cool", and half said they would choose between the flower market and the nightclub, and the 2,000 people spent an average of two hours a week fiddling with greenery. At chelsea flower shows over the past few years, the number of consumers buying gardening tools between the ages of 25 and 34 has also risen sharply.
In the first half of 2021, Pro Landscaper, a professional magazine for landscape architecture in the United Kingdom, found that the number of private garden projects that came to consult and start to expand soared by more than 90%. I changed houses during the second lockdown in England, and my new home was a back garden of more than 250 square meters. Soon after moving in, we began to think about how to design the garden, and the first decision was to build a small greenhouse so that vegetables and flower seedlings could be cultivated in the cold British winter.
In addition to the "pleasant" role of getting along with nature, making flowers and grasses in their own garden, there is also more satisfaction of "planting melons to get melons". In the small courtyard of the former residence, I was an introduction to gardening and warm-up, I met the "flower grid shell mother" who was native to The United Kingdom and resembled a snake's head, and I initially understood that "daffodil" refers to far more than the white-petaled yellow-petaled yellow -- "narcissus" that I knew since I was a child, nor the big yellow daffodil "daffodil" that inspired William Wordsworth to write poems when I was reading. The most common yellow-petaled daffodil in England is sold in supermarkets every early spring, but one time I visited the flower market, I found a white, pale orange double-petal daffodil that I prefer. From this introduction, I found that this is just the tip of the iceberg: there are more than 50 varieties of daffodils on the market alone. These days just turned to the study of Kew Gardens, the Royal Botanic Gardens in London five years ago, showing that there are nearly 370,000 species of flowering plants in the world, with an average of 2,000 new varieties found every year, and Brazil, Australia and China are the countries with the most new varieties of plants. There are not many flowers native to Britain, but in the past two or three hundred years, a large number of seeds have been introduced from all over the world through traders and colonists, and today the United Kingdom and Ireland calculate that the two countries have collected nearly 3,000 varieties of flowers and plants, and they are all collected in detail.
During the lockdown, many people learned to cook; those who used to cook ushered in rapid improvement in cooking. Once a grain-free me, now when walking on the street and visiting the botanical garden, I can often look at the leaves to identify the varieties of plants. Unconsciously, I learned that if I wanted to see daffodils, tulips, and crocus blooming in early spring and March, I had to plant the seeds in the fall and winter. I also became familiar with the floral nature of each season: among the wildflowers, the snowdrop in England must have been the earliest primrose, followed by hyacinth and saffron. The camellias introduced from China in the mid-18th century have always been regarded as the noble ladies of flowers, and in the past thirty or forty years they have also begun to take root in the gardens of the British people, becoming the first flowering plants in early spring. At the same time, tulips and daffodils bloom, followed by cherry blossoms and magnolias. Approaching April, it is the turn of the blue bell flowers that are wild in England. March and April are also the beginning of spring ploughing, and summer flowers need to be prepared: lilies, dahlias, sword orchids, etc. Not far from each neighborhood is a Garden centre and the plant department of the building materials supermarket B&Q, where we amateur gardeners shop.
I haven't returned home for 3 years since the pandemic. Sitting under the rose vines in the back garden, I still miss the big banyan trees and the fragrance of frangipani in the tropical climate of Lingnan in my hometown. After studying around, it was found that banyan trees needed humidity and temperature that England could not give anymore. However, the frangipani and banana trees may survive, but they need to be moved indoors in the winter for more care. I went to a nearby flower market and bought a banana sapling and ordered an egg fry online. It would be a little troublesome to take care of other plants, but it was worth it to build an exotic little universe in the north of Europe that felt intimate.
Visiting the flower market is not only a way to discover new varieties in season, but also the pleasure of reading plant names. Apples and roses are particularly suitable for the climate and soil of England, and the varieties of these two plants are so numerous that they play with flowers. Usually, I like to eat an apple that is close to "Red Fuji" in texture, called "Royal Gala", because this variety of apples has been "approved" by the Queen of England. David Austin, who has been cultivating roses professionally since 1961, has been named more often: from "Poet's Wife", "Little White Pet", "Ballerina", to "Emily Brontë" to name a pale pink rose. The light orange rose that caught my eye was named after the 19th-century poet Tanison's poem "Lady of Shalott.". I've also planted this one in my garden, and it produces flowers that resemble the former Raphael-style "Lady of Shalott" hair under John William Waterhouse's brush. I recently bought a red rose and came home to find it called "Ingmar Bergman." Looking through the information, it is said that the Danes who cultivated this breed in 1984 commemorated the film director who died at that time.
After the move, the garden area has increased a lot more than in the past, and the cost of plants has increased. It is of course best to carry a mature magnolia tree and apple tree home directly, but between a 1 meter 6 tree and an 80 cm sapling, the price difference is more than double. In the process, I slowly began to train my patience, if I like a flower, the best deal is to buy seeds and plant them myself. Sowing in the early spring, after a few months, the flowers can bloom to attract bees and butterflies. The presence of bees and butterflies in the garden is a happiness index for the gardeners, and in addition to this, my garden is often visited by robins, goldfinches, and some birds and finches whose names I can't name. Of course, the coin has two sides. Snails love to eat young leaves and bite fresh lilies to the ground; squirrels that love tulip bulbs will plan out the seeds. Squirrel snails used to be cute, but now I need to wrestle with them every day. However, these small troubles in nature can still be a concoction to human social life.
Today the number of gardening enthusiasts is on the rise, but the number of houses with gardens is declining. About 87% of the UK's 67 million residents today have a garden at home. But compared to a century ago, the size of the houses of the British people today has been greatly reduced, and the area of the garden is also declining. Data from a 2013 survey of British houses with gardens showed that the average area of private gardens was 163.2 square metres, compared to 168 square metres in 1983. According to 2010 figures, more than 20 million People in the UK do not have a garden in their homes, and by 2020, 10.5% of houses in the UK do not have a garden.
But this figure also shows the weight of gardens in traditional British homes. Even during World War II, gardens were put to good use, and people were self-sufficient in growing fruits and vegetables in the garden. In the post-war 1950s, attention was refocused on ornamental and decorative gardening, and it was only natural to trim the lawns in their gardens to a level and neat manner. By 1955, the first garden centre opened in Dorset, southern England. Suddenly, people walk into a shop and find a variety of plants and flowers, which has completely changed the aesthetic and consumption habits of British gardening enthusiasts. By the 1970s, when the British counterculture movement was rising, the horticultural world was followed by the trend of growing its own vegetables and being self-sufficient. In another 10 years, the "back garden" became an indispensable element of modern life in the British, and the habit of barbecueting in their own garden in the summer and expanding the sun room in the garden, which was popular to this day, was also a product of the 1980s. During the two years of lockdown in England, in addition to the high interest in ornamental decorative plants, the proportion of vegetables grown in their own gardens has also increased. The epidemic has caused people to feel a sense of food crisis in addition to hoarding goods, and the "do-it-yourself and abundant food" attitude to life has seen a revival since the counter-mainstream cultural movement in the 1970s.
Last year, my family and I also began to plough the lawn in the back garden to plant seedlings of Dutch beans, melons, beans, cauliflower, as well as Shanghai green, white radish and cabbage seedlings. White radish does not grow large, and most of the cabbage and cauliflower are eaten by snails, but in the summer, the green vegetables and beans harvested by stubble can't be eaten by themselves and sent a bunch to the neighbors, and it is really good to have a feeling of not having to go out to buy vegetables for a long time.