Lost Garden(ers) of Heligan

_1080653There’s a reason for changing the usual name of these gardens.  We’ve just got back from 5 days in Cornwall which we spent entirely in exploring the gardens – they’re that good. We first visited in the summer with some of our family including the three grandchildren.  They raced around having fun and doing what happy children do and we would not begrudge them a single moment of that mad ecstatic reception of a new place -in truth I wish we could all recover it for ourselves. But there was much more than novelty and ‘visitor experience’ going on there, and that was what we spent last week exploring. So this posting may well turn into several as I turn the days over in my mind.

Why “Lost gardeners” then? Cynics might say that every visitor attraction needs a ‘hook’, and the narrative that the Gardens have come up with hinges on the discovery of old privvy (earth closet) in the gardens which was used by the gardeners and on the walls of which some of them had inscribed their names. This became important almost a century later when it was discovered that a significant number of those who’d written their names on the wall had fought in the First World War and never returned. It’s a poignant discovery that must surely give anyone who passes by – for even a moment – pause for reflection. A sombre remembrance in a place of great beauty. I couldn’t sense any trace of commercial cynicism there.  The little herb garden adjoining the ‘thunderbox’ associated the name of each remembered man (they were all men) with particular herbs; a form of remembering that was all the more powerful for its understatement.

By chance, or as a Jungian might say – ‘synchronicity’ – I was reading a collection Wendell Berry’s writings, “The World Ending Fire”, every evening when we returned to the campervan. I’ve picked at his writing for decades, but something about the conjunction of time, place and setting gave his words and thoughts wings. Most of us have probably had moments when the book and the reader suddenly seem made for one another.

_1080659Heligan puts before us that which is lost and issues an unusual challenge, not the usual “what do you feel about it?” which is an empty question with no worth.  No, the question that the project raises is more like “what do you do about it?”. What do you do about the loss of those lives? what do you do about the loss of those skills? of that whole culture of local economy?

Wendell Berry shares with William Cobbett, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, the capacity to hold the lyrical and the downright angry together. I want to write more about him when I’ve had time to think some more, but as I read him I had the strangest feeling that he was exposing some of the tangled roots of the perplexing extremism that’s appearing like bindweed in our societies.

_1080681

The toll of the industrial slaughter of the First World War was just one of the reasons for the decline of the Heligan Estate, but there was more to follow, much of it the result of exploitative farming and the destruction of whole habitats and their cultures – not least the local human communities whose skills and memories and whose mutual dependence cry ‘shame’ at our isolated and hard-hearted lives. It would be easier to visit the Lost Gardens of Heligan and forget all about the lost gardeners, but I don’t think that’s the idea at all. The vision of fulfilment and plenty that keeps breaking through the sense of loss is an energising vision, a quiet and beguiling political statment if you like, that says – “it doesn’t have to be like this”.

_1080676

 

 

Author: Dave Pole

I've spent my life doing a lot of things, all of them interesting and many of them great fun. When most people see my CV they probably think I'm making things up because it includes being a rather bad welder and engineering dogsbody, a potter, a groundsman and bus driver. I taught in a prison and in one of those ghastly old mental institutions as an art therapist and I spent ten years as a community artist. I was one of the founding members of Spike Island, which began life as Artspace Bristol. ! wrote a column for Bristol Evening Post (I got sacked three times, in which I take some pride) and I worked in local and network radio and then finally became an Anglican parish priest for 25 years, retiring at 68 when I realised that the institutional church and me were on different paths. What interests me? It would be easier to list what doesn't, but I love cooking and baking with our home grown ingredients. I'm fascinated by botany and wildlife in general, and botanical illustration. We have a camper van that takes us to the wild places, we love walking, especially in the hills, and we take too many photographs. But what really animates me is the question "what does it mean to be human?". I've spent my life exploring it in every possible way and the answer is ..... well, today it's sitting in the van in the rain and looking across Ramsey Sound towards Ramsey Island. But it might as easily be digging potatoes or making pickle, singing or finding an orchid or just sitting. But it sure as hell doesn't mean getting a promotion, beasting your co-workers or being obsequious to power, which ensured that my rise to greatness in the Church of England flatlined 30 years ago after about 2 days. But I'm still here and still searching for that elusive sweet spot, and I don't have to please anyone any more. Over the last 50 or so years we've had a succession of gardens, some more like wildernesses when we were both working full-time, but now we're back in the game with our two allotments in Bath.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d