A Green and Pleasant Land

by Ursula Buchan

  In 1939, the NAS was largely run by two energetic individuals, the Secretary, G. W. Giles, and the Treasurer, Henry Berry, who was also a member of the London County Council. There were regional committees of the NAS in the provinces. The President, Sir Francis Acland MP, died in June 1939 and was succeeded by Lord Trent, who was the son of Jesse Boot, the philanthropically inclined son of the founder of Boots the Chemist. Both Acland and Trent were high-minded, public-spirited men and helpful advisers to the secretariat.

  In the early months of 1939, with war threatening once more, the NAS voiced anxieties that the government was not preparing sufficiently to increase domestic food production and would not do so until the crisis actually arrived:

  For many years it [the allotment movement] has made an important contribution to food supply, public health, useful employment and national well-being. In the last war it admittedly made a most notable contribution to our country’s needs. It is, of course, now prepared to undertake with all its strength any national service asked of it and as, in spite of all the difficulties against which it has to contend, it is in a finer state of organisation and loyalty than a generation ago the contribution which it could make to the nation’s strength if a special call came would be considerable.20

  It was the local allotment associations, in tandem with those authorities which took their duties under the Allotments Acts seriously, who would prove to be the engines for allotment growth as the war threat intensified, as well as relentless prickers of the consciences of those not doing their utmost to provide the necessary land.

  During the 1930s, the NAS became closely allied with the Friends’21 Allotments Committee, chaired by Dr Joan Fry,22 which raised funds by public subscription to provide half-price fertilisers, seeds and tools for unemployed allotmenteers. This scheme had operated initially in the mining valleys of South Wales during the 1920s but expanded its range elsewhere during the Depression. By 1931, the Ministry of Agriculture was sufficiently impressed with what it had achieved to match public donations pound for pound. The scheme was popular, with 102,000 applicants in 1938. The NAS had representatives on this committee, and local affiliated allotment associations organised bulk buying and distribution for it, as they did for their own members. At the outbreak of war this scheme was extended to include indigent old-age pensioners, widows of servicemen, and wives of men serving in the armed forces.

  The interwar housing boom was the main reason for the decline in numbers of urban allotments after the 1914–18 conflict. In many localities, houses had been built on old allotment sites, much to the sorrow of the NAS, since hard-won soil fertility was lost forever beneath concrete and brick. The Society regarded the precipitous fall in the number of allotments as a national misfortune and in 1939 pressed the issue of security of tenure with the Minister of Agriculture, Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, receiving nothing more substantial than fine words in reply. Dorman-Smith refused to promise central government funds to help local authorities in this regard, nor would he give assurances concerning security of tenure beyond the growing season. This issue would become even more prominent in the war years, when much land was taken in by local authorities for ‘wartime’ allotments, without there being any guarantee of security of tenure when the war was over. All the Minister would agree to do was to send a strongly worded appeal to the local authorities, reminding them of their statutory responsibilities.

  Allotment holders, garden owners and estate gardeners all depended on commercial concerns to provide them with seeds and plants. There were hundreds of plant nurseries and dozens of seed businesses, either serving a local customer base or sending their goods across the country by rail or road. Nurseries either offered an extensive range of hardy plants, or specialised in particular types of plant: hardy nursery stock (that is, trees and shrubs); herbaceous perennials; alpines or greenhouse plants. Vegetable plants could be bought in the spring at many country nurseries, or at their shop outlets in towns. Most perennial plants were ‘sent for’ – that is, ordered from a catalogue and delivered to the householder in the dormant season, between November and March, having been dug up from fields. Only tender greenhouse plants were sold out of pots; the rest were ‘bare-rooted’. Many nurseries were small in extent, perhaps only an acre or two. There were no garden centres as we know them. Seeds were also bought mail-order, although Cuthbert’s did sell a selection of cheap packets through the high street chain Woolworth’s. Bare-rooted roses and soft fruit could also be acquired there.

  In the late 1930s, market gardening in Britain was not in very good shape, thanks to the ease with which cheaper hardy vegetables could be imported from northern Europe, and tender vegetables and fruit from colonial dependencies or the Dominions (Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.) The value of imports of fresh fruit and vegetables was a very substantial £33.8 million in 1939. For example, nearly 250,000 tons of onions were imported that year, mainly from Holland and Belgium,23 and 80 per cent of the country’s fruit came from overseas.24 As a result, there had been little investment in horticultural infrastructure or mechanisation in the years before the war, so processes were labour-intensive. (In that regard, commercial horticulture was similar to agriculture.)

  There was one particular type of market gardening operation which was to prove very useful during the war. The Land Settlement Association was a co-operative set up by the government in 1934. Its aim was to settle unemployed industrial workers – especially miners – from the north-east of England as well as Wales in communities of smallholdings. These men would grow market garden produce, which would then be sold through the co-operative.

  By the time war broke out, there were 1,100 smallholdings in twenty-six settlements with a total acreage of 11,000, of which 3,000 were used for growing horticultural produce while the rest were for small-scale livestock and arable farming. Each smallholding consisted of an area of five acres, with a cottage; the smallholder was provided with suitable livestock by the Association. By 1939, more than 1,200 glasshouses had been erected and there were 80,000 ‘Dutch lights’25 in use.

  A public-spirited inhabitant of Worthing, Joan Strange, wrote in her diary on 2 July 1939:

  . . . went to Sydenham and discussed the Land Settlement Association’s scheme there. Each family has a house – four [sic] acres of land, one greenhouse, one pigsty and one hennery. There are 159 families, all are unemployed miners from the North. It works well in the majority of cases but some of the wives are discontented and prefer a husband on the dole plus near neighbours, cinema, pub, fried-fish shop and Woolworths!26

  Market gardeners were not notably progressive in their methods, partly because money for capital investment was scarce but also because they had surprisingly little to do with the horticultural research institutes, and vice versa. As we shall see, the war would provide the impetus for closer contact, to their mutual benefit. The important institutes with a horticultural remit were Long Ashton, near Bristol, East Malling in the fruit-growing area of Kent, and the John Innes Horticultural Institution at Merton, in south-west London.

  In the years before the war, scientists in these institutions were working on a variety of research projects: the development of F1 hybrids27, virus-free soft fruit, dwarfing rootstocks for fruit trees, plant hormones and hormone rooting powders, reliable seed and potting composts, effective treatments for a variety of pests and diseases, the impact of pesticide residues and vitamin-C-rich fruit syrups.

  Amateur gardeners looked to the Royal Horticultural Society, since it was the one organisation concerned with research into the specific problems that they encountered. In 1939, the RHS was an important source of expert gardening advice for ordinary gardeners, and had been so, despite vicissitudes, since its foundation in 1804. Established to advance horticulture in all its branches, the RHS held a unique position in the gardening life of the country; or in England, at least, since that was where most of its members lived. It was a self-confident, learned and philanthropic organisation, but a
lso Anglocentric, conservative and sometimes unimaginative. Its membership was predominantly upper middle class, its leading officials patrician. It catered primarily for well-heeled gardeners in the south-east of England, among them many amateur experts, ranging from landowners with vast woodland gardens to old ladies with pocket-handkerchief gardens full of rare plants.

  The membership was divided into Fellows and Associates. Prospective Fellows had to be nominated by an existing Fellow and pay an annual subscription of between one and four guineas, while Associates were men who were employed in horticulture and who paid a subscription of 10/6d. It was a matter of Gentlemen and Players. The membership rose during the 1930s to 36,500 in 1939, but still consisted of only a tiny fraction of those who pursued gardening seriously. No doubt the necessity of finding a Fellow to put your name forward, as well as the substantial cost, restricted membership to the better-off and horticulturally well-connected. Nevertheless, the RHS did have a formal relationship with a great number of affiliated societies – local horticultural clubs that paid a small fee, and received some group benefits in return – and these both helped to disseminate information from the RHS and also, to a limited extent, informed the Society of local concerns.

  The RHS held flower shows and meetings at fortnightly intervals throughout the year in the New Hall, opened in 1928, in Greycoat Street in Westminster. Those staged between February and October lasted for two days, while the rest were for one day only. These shows were known, not surprisingly, as ‘Fortnightlies’, a name that stuck, long after the shows ceased to be held so frequently. The biggest events spilled over into what became the Old Hall in nearby Vincent Square, where also were accommodated the Society’s offices and meeting rooms and the Lindley Library, with its 20,000 volumes. Some of the shows were given a title: for example, the Daffodil Show, the Early Market Produce Show, the Fruit and Vegetable Show and, of course, the Great Spring Show. The Great Spring Show was held in the last week of May – to suit the many large-garden owners who grew rhododendrons – not in Vincent Square but in the grounds of the Chelsea Hospital.28 The show had been there since 1912, after it outgrew its space in the Temple Gardens. No plants were sold at any of the shows.

  Fellows of the RHS benefited from a monthly journal, mainly written by the Society’s officers or Fellows, for which they received no fee. The Society owned one garden, at Wisley in Surrey, which it had been given in 1911. Here a number of scientific officers were employed, both to pursue research projects useful to amateurs and to give written advice to Fellows, provided that the latter sent in specimens according to very strict prescriptions. There was even a garden inspector, who would look at Fellows’ gardens and give advice for a daily fee of three guineas.

  The gardens at Wisley were open to the public, except for Good Friday and Christmas Day. On Sundays, only Fellows and their guests were admitted. Garden visitors could reach Wisley by trains of the Southern Railway, although then, as now, it meant an expensive taxi ride from West Byfleet or Weybridge stations. The National Fruit Trials were based at Wisley,29 although this was an unsatisfactory situation, since – strangely – the trees were planted in a frost pocket, and suffered from damaging spring frosts two years out of three. The flower trials were relatively modest; certainly much less extensive than they are today. Each March, the Society held a distribution of surplus seeds and plants. Everything had to be requested in writing; this was the era of the postcard, sent one day and arriving the next, and costing 1d in stamps.

  The Royal Horticultural Society was governed by a council of fifteen members, composed of the good and great in the horticultural world: scientists, nurserymen, professional gardeners, and knowledgeable amateurs who owned large gardens. Like most learned societies at the time, it was run predominantly by men. In 1939, a number of eminent public figures sat on RHS committees, including the artist John Nash; Lt Col. Leonard Messel, OBE, who owned the world-renowned garden of Nymans in Sussex, and after whom a beautiful pink magnolia is named; E. A. Bowles of Myddelton House, Enfield, one of the great plantsman luminaries of the first half of the twentieth century, who sat on both the Scientific and the Narcissus and Tulip committees; and E. A. Bunyard, a Kent nurseryman and self-confessed epicure, who presided over the Fruit and Vegetable Committee.

  During the early years of the twentieth century, the RHS had a good relationship with government, at least partly because of its multifarious and helpful activities during the First World War. During that time, it had raised money for the Red Cross, established a horticultural War Relief Fund, allowed the Horticultural Hall to be used as a billet for Australian troops and organised the dispatch of plants to army field hospitals in France, as well as seeds and flower show rules to the civilian internment and prisoner-of-war camp at Ruhleben. This camp, based at a racetrack outside Berlin, was highly organised by the mainly British inmates and even boasted a Ruhleben Horticultural Society, affiliated to the RHS and with almost a thousand members. This society put together flower show competitions, and also held botany classes, where all the plants studied came from the pond in the middle of the racecourse. A glasshouse was made from tobacco boxes, and cold frames were constructed to nurture flowering bulbs. Much ground was dug and thousands of vegetable seedlings planted.

  Crucially, the RHS was also involved, from 1917 onwards, in promoting food production in gardens and allotments, organising expert lectures and making demonstration gardens. It also encouraged jam-making and fruit-bottling – to make good use of surplus fruit – and campaigned for the government to release more sugar supplies so that gardeners could make their own preserves.

  In the interwar period, the Society lobbied the government on a number of issues, in particular trade descriptions of insecticides and the importance of controlling the burgeoning grey squirrel population.30 In 1932, the president, Henry McLaren, the second Baron Aberconway (who owned Bodnant Garden in north Wales and was chairman of the Glasgow shipyard John Brown and Co.), wrote a letter to The Times encouraging gardeners to continue to buy and plant nursery stock, despite the economic difficulties that the country was facing during the Depression. The Society was certainly the nurseryman’s friend.

  As war threatened, during the Munich crisis, it was natural that the War Office should turn to the Society again to requisition what was now the Old Hall, this time for the training of the Territorial Army.

  The RHS catered for all enthusiastic gardeners, but there were also a number of specialist plant societies in existence before the outbreak of the Second World War. The National Rose Society was one of the earliest to be founded (1876), but dahlias (1881) and chrysanthemums (1884) followed closely behind. They survived the Great War intact, and were joined by the Iris Society in 1922 and the Alpine Garden Society in 1929. Rock gardening had become increasingly popular as plant enthusiasts journeyed to the Alps, with plant hunter Reginald Farrer’s overheated prose ringing in their ears.31 Curiously, there was no national society for promoting the amateur growing of vegetables.32 That work fell to the National Allotments Society.

  During the early 1920s, gardening and gardens as subjects for media attention were confined almost entirely to daily newspapers and magazines, of which Amateur Gardening, Popular Gardening, Garden Work for Amateurs and My Garden were prominent. Professional gardeners read The Gardeners’ Chronicle.

  However, in March 1924, less than two years after the British Broadcasting Company was founded,33 the first practical gardening bulletins were broadcast on the radio. These were provided to the BBC by the Royal Horticultural Society, and mostly written by Frederick Chittenden, director of Wisley Gardens. At the end of 1924, the RHS also supplied a separate bulletin for the north of England. From time to time, well-known gardeners, such as Vita Sackville-West and Marion Cran,34 provided more elevated contributions. In 1931, the BBC asked the Society to recommend gardeners who might be approached as speakers. One of the names – others were Sackville-West and Dr H. V. Taylor35 – was that of C. H. Middleton.

 
; Mr Middleton’s36 first broadcast, on 9 May 1931, began: ‘Good afternoon. Well, it’s not much of a day for gardening, is it?’ It was immediately obvious that he had what it took to shine in this new medium. However, for the first three years, he was just one of several broadcasters under RHS direction. It was not until September 1934 that he was given his own weekly series, In the Garden, which soon changed to In Your Garden. The programme was a great success – and, as we shall see, the obvious vehicle for publicising a wartime gardening campaign – and he continued broadcasting regularly until his untimely death in 1945.

  The wireless was well set up before 1939 to be the medium for mass communication to the British people during the war. There were only 25,000 television sets, and in any event, the television was turned off on 1 September 1939 during a Mickey Mouse cartoon ‘for the duration’. Radios were not expensive, and most people in the country could get wireless reception. It was estimated that thirty-four million people listened in, although radio licence evasion was so rife that the numbers may have been substantially higher than that. There were two services, National and Regional. Before the war, programmes were broadcast from 10.15 a.m. to midnight. The output was a mixture of news, talks, drama, variety and comedy, dance music, classical music and schools broadcasts. Outside broadcasting was possible, but it was in its infancy. Sir John (later Lord) Reith, the Director General of the BBC, was notably high-minded, so there was an overtly educational slant to much of the programming. Garden talks were, therefore, meant to be as informative as they were entertaining. ‘By 1939 the BBC had, by virtue of both its monopoly position and its broadcasting achievements, created a new social focus for the British people, a common source of information and entertainment that neither the press nor the cinema could rival.’37