Regular readers will appreciate that Manorbier and District Gardening Club's members and visitors enjoy a very high standard of guest speaker at their meetings. Throughout 2003 a range of horticultural experts, amateur and professional, have informed, entertained and educated their appreciative audiences. Subjects have ranged from Climbers, Scramblers and Ramblers (February) to Ground Cover Plants (March); from Dahlias (May) to Fuchsias (October); this month the speaker was Graham Rankin recounting the epic story of A Garden Lost in Time!
Warm applause greeted Mr. Rankin, who has been director of operations at the beautiful site at Aberglasney since 1999. Following a series of very successful BBC television programmes, many of the audience felt a familiarity with Graham Rankin that appearances on television often generate with viewers. His demeanour and confident personal style set exactly the right atmosphere in the Village Hall for what was a fascinating evening.
The project at Aberglasney, in Carmarthenshire, to restore and transform the gardens and to renovate the house is now well under way. The Gardening Club visited the site at a very early stage and since then there have been many private visits by members. This has engendered a wonderful sense of having some 'responsibility' for and some 'ownership' of this venture. There s a genuine feeling of support from visitors. We all want to ensure a successful and permanent outcome to all the research, planning, landscaping and jolly hard work that his ambitious scheme has entailed.
Not all projects of this magnitude can be guaranteed such a positive response. A site both historical and romantic appears to create the same enthusiasms and passions in the people who work there. The atmosphere and general ambience of the place calms the soul, refreshes the spirit, but energises the mind!
'A Garden Lost in Time', is the evocative name of the book first published in 1999, about the transformation which was, naturally, the theme of Graham Rankin's talk. He revealed some of the secrets of the site, said to have been under cultivation in one form or another for seven centuries. He shared with us many 'before' and 'after' slides of the same places taken from the same viewpoint. He showed us what appeared to be magic, in quick shifting time.
A slide of an early print showed two ladies in crinolines fashionable in the late 1860s strolling in well cultivated gardens with the well-kept house in the background. Slides of the ruined property (inhabited until the 1950s) brought groans of horror from the audience which were renewed as further photographs of gardens, where ladies in silk gowns had once strolled with their parasols, now shows these areas swamped with the vigorous growth of the all too familiar Japanese knotweed.
A slide of an old print illustrated the grand portico on the front elevation, quickly followed by another which showed it had gone! The portico that is, not the knotweed, which like all unwelcome horticultural intruders was thriving.
The audience, cocooned within the cosy warmth and dimness of the hall, was soon worrying about how to approach a seemingly unachievable, prohibitively expensive and never ever ending venture. Where to begin?
Graham spoke reassuringly while explaining the research, planning, fund-raising and endless discussions which had taken place, leading ultimately to work on the project getting underway. The archaeologists delved, dug and drew. Contractors collaborated and colluded and also, incidentally and inevitably, compacted the soil with their heavy vehicles. Builders did not balk.
Experts extinguished any remaining doubts about the importance of the house and of its gardens as more and more of the original became revealed. Work was soon well under way and the general public were already being allowed in to monitor its progress.
Once the hard landscaping was completed a great tonnage of polluted soil had to be removed. Local farmers delivered over 100 tons of manure. Decisions about planting had to be made. These vital conclusions had serious cost implications and also had to be 'correct' historically. Plans and seeds were selected and ordered from specialist suppliers all over the UK. The project was well on its way to success.
Later illustrations showed the Aberglasney gardens in different guises throughout the changing seasons since their opening in 1999. Of the thousands of visitors who came on the 364 days of opening each year, a very recent caller made a big impression on Graham. He had been delighted to witness, early one morning, an otter eagerly enjoying one of the ponds. Let us hope the otter and all his friends and ourselves will be enjoying more and more of the beauty of Aberglasney.
Graham Rankin conveyed both in words and pictures what has been achieved and can now be shared with visitors.
After warm applause and answers to a few questions, particularly about that pesky knotweed, he bade farewell and said he hoped to see us at the Aberglasney Christmas Fayre on December 6 and 7.
If you enjoy gardening, watching other people gardening, reading about gardening, or even reading about other people going to Gardening Club meetings, why not come along in the new year to the Village Hall, Manorbier, at 7.30 pm on the second Wednesday of each month? You will be warmly welcomed and will surely find new friends.