A Green and Pleasant Land

by Ursula Buchan

  For wartime gardeners and commercial growers, the most important research work to be conducted at the JIHI was on potting composts and was carried out during the 1930s by the remarkable W. J. C. Lawrence (see Chapter Five). Lawrence had begun his working career at Merton in 1913 as a fourteen-year-old boy when his doctor advised outdoor work, for the simple reason that his eyesight was too bad for office work. He started as an unpaid garden boy, worked his way up to sub-foreman, then moved to Kew as a student gardener. After the First World War, he came back to Merton to work as a technical assistant to Morley Crane, who carried out research on fruit breeding and also studied the genetics of colour pigmentation in dahlias. Rather unexpectedly, and not entirely to Lawrence’s satisfaction, Sir Daniel Hall asked him to become the Institution’s gardens curator in 1932, at a time when the gardens were rather neglected and in need of taking in hand. As a salve to Lawrence’s pride, Hall promised him that he could continue working on the genetics of colour pigmentation in Streptocarpus (Cape primrose). He might be running the gardens, but he could not quite tear himself away from research.

  As it turned out, Lawrence’s greatest contribution to the war effort was initiated almost by chance. In 1933, some important genetics research work on Primula sinensis had to be entirely scrapped because three quarters of the seedlings died from wilt disease. This prompted Lawrence and his assistant, John Newell, to begin a series of trials on seed and potting compost mixtures, in order to try to discover whether they could find more reliable media in which to germinate and grow on seedlings.

  When Lawrence became gardens curator, he had found a long list of potting composts suitable for particular plants stuck on a wall in the potting shed. Like so many other gardening establishments, the Institution used time-honoured but completely unscientific recipes for potting composts, which often succeeded because of the amenability of the plant being potted rather than from their intrinsic efficacy. These composts were based on a mixture of loam, leaf mould, sand and often also lime mortar rubble. The fertiliser added was usually bonemeal, but could be anything the head gardener had in the potting shed, so that the mixture was often unbalanced, and growth then was either too ‘hard’ or too ‘soft’. The loam used was unsterilised, which meant that often two or three times as many seeds had to be sown as seedlings needed, because of the likelihood of death from ‘damping-off’ or another soil-borne disease. The composts also grew weeds.

  At the same time, and in connection with this, Lawrence and Newell worked on methods of steam sterilisation to try to obviate these problems. They wanted to produce a standardised compost that would work better than any existing mixture.

  It took several years of meticulous trialling before the two men developed formulae that they believed would reliably give optimum results. The biggest breakthrough came when Lawrence discovered that adding superphosphate to the compost would counter the nutrient deficiency caused by steam-sterilising the soil. They also discovered that only the loam needed sterilising, since sphagnum moss peat – which they preferred to leaf mould for its better porosity and water-retaining properties – is naturally sterile.

  Lawrence wrote later that their experiments ‘were made with no instruments other than a borrowed pH meter and a thermometer for measuring the temperature of soil while it was being sterilised. The appeal was to the plant. Did it grow better or worse? The answer was decisive. It grew best in the new composts!’47

  By 1935, Lawrence had also worked out the optimum amount of fertiliser – sulphate of ammonia together with ‘hoof and horn’ – to add to the potting compost. At that point, he began to use one seed compost and one potting compost at the Institution; the results were a resounding success, at least as far as primulas were concerned.

  He and Newell then experimented with growing other plant types in these composts. Detailed trialling revealed that the composts were suitable for at least 130 different kinds of plant, from alpines to tropical species. By 1938, they were able to publish formulae for a seed compost, which could also be used for striking softwood cuttings, together with three potting composts, distinguished from each other by a single, double or triple amount of the base fertiliser. The ratio of loam to peat to sand was 2:1:1 for the seed compost, and 7:3:2 for the potting composts – formulae that have remained the same to this day. The Institution did not patent the formulas. Fertiliser companies such as the stylishly named Ichthemic Guano Co.48 manufactured the composts from 1939 onwards. They quickly became known simply as the John Innes composts, and they rapidly put an end to unstandardised, individual mixtures devised by gardeners, that had been at best wasteful and at worst disastrous.49

  Neither Lawrence nor the John Innes Horticultural Institution made any money out of the discoveries, but they earned the gratitude of countless professional and amateur gardeners for decades to come. The composts were also important for the success of commercial plant production during the war, since they almost eliminated waste and the risk of failed crops. Moreover, they proved that it was necessary, rather than simply desirable, for horticultural practices to be tested scientifically. In the years after the war, when the labour force declined so rapidly, this was to prove crucial for what success commercial horticulture enjoyed.

  The immediate impact of these composts might have been enough for many men, but not for the ever-enquiring Lawrence, who went on to conduct a number of other trials in pursuit of more efficient food production. For example, he investigated whether early ‘pricking-out’ resulted in better and faster growth, especially as far as tomatoes50 were concerned. He discovered that early pricking-out produced sturdier, more precocious plants that fruited earlier. He also exploded the myth51 that pot plants in glasshouses had to be planted into warm, rather than cold, soil or compost and watered with lukewarm, rather than cold, water, lest they suffer a check from the shock. He discovered that cold soil and water made absolutely no difference to the growth of pot plants.

  However, even more important was his discovery in December 1943 that standard north–south-orientated glasshouses allowed in only 52 per cent of the available light from outside, but that this rose to 70 per cent if glasshouses were facing east–west, thereby also gaining in heat retention by 5 per cent. After the war had ended, these discoveries caused him to design glasshouses with larger panes of glass. He wrote an influential work, Science and the Glasshouse, on the subject, which was published in 1948.

  When the blackout regulations were lifted completely in April 1945, Lawrence began investigating the possibilities of installing artificial lighting in glasshouses to promote or alter plant growth for commercial purposes. By switching on lamps attached to the rafters of the greenhouse for set periods of the night, it was found possible to manipulate the timing of flowering. This was to have great benefits for post-war chrysanthemum and poinsettia growers.

  Perhaps because of his particular experience, Lawrence understood better than most the importance of disseminating the results of research work, and that included communicating with growers in a language they could understand. During the 1930s, the relationship between commercial concerns and the horticultural research stations was surprisingly remote and detached. Until the war, scientists rarely met nurserymen or vice versa. That situation was to change, albeit slowly, during the period of hostilities, as both sides recognised that increased food production required a much fuller exchange of ideas.

  As a result, Lawrence regularly published his findings in popular horticultural journals such as The Gardeners’ Chronicle. He was fully supported in this by the Institution’s wartime director, Cyril Darlington, who encouraged him in the writing of a number of leaflets and bulletins, aimed at both professional growers and amateur gardeners, as well as writing some himself. All of these bulletins were based on articles originally published in scientific or horticultural journals, but simplified sufficiently to suit a wide audience. They were: 1. John Innes Composts; 2. Soil Sterilisation for Pot Plants; 3. The Soil Steriliser52; 4. The Fertility Rules i
n Fruit Planting; 5. Growing Tomatoes out of Doors; 6. Soil Ingredients of the Composts.53 The Fertility Rules in Fruit Planting took advantage of John Innes research into the genetics of incompatibility in fruit varieties, information that gardeners and commercial growers still use today when planning orchard plantings. Growing tomatoes out of doors was a subject dear to amateur gardeners’ hearts that benefited from wartime research at Merton Park..

  Sixty-two thousand leaflets were sold at 6d each during the course of the war, and they went through several editions. As Darlington said, in an interview conducted in 1979:54

  When war began, my immediate special interest was to publish the information that we had that would be an advantage to food production . . . The Ministry of Agriculture wouldn’t publish [the leaflets] because, naturally really, the Ministry of Agriculture at that time was strongly averse to any research55. . . particularly anything outside itself . . . so we published it ourselves.56

  Wartime exigencies had caused at least one research station to abandon its ivory tower, and find that it didn’t miss it.

  Young school leavers and female gardeners replaced those called up, and the Institution reduced the burden of garden work by substituting the growing of food crops for some of the experimental work. The geneticists worked instead on raising hybrid tomato and other seed that yielded well, as well as producing tomato and cucumber seed for Carter and Sons.

  Of course, the John Innes Horticultural Institution was hardly immune from wartime measures, especially since Merton, on the south-western edge of London and home to the Lines Brothers factory, was an obvious target for German bombers. Lines Brothers had been a famous toy business, using the trademark Tri-ang, but had switched to munitions manufacture when the war started. Most of the scientists and gardeners who were able to stay at Merton inevitably became involved in air-raid precaution duties. Four shelters were built in the grounds, and those books in the library considered irreplaceable were sent to Lord Wandsworth School at Long Sutton in Hampshire, or to the RHS Gardens at Wisley.

  That was just as well, for one bomb fell in the walled garden at Merton Park in May 1941 and, more seriously, there were a number of attacks by V-1 flying bombs – ‘doodlebugs’ – between 15 June and 27 August 1944, on which day twenty or so fell within a mile of the Manor House. The bomb that dropped on the afternoon of Sunday 20 August knocked down the garden wall, blew out the glass in the glasshouses and damaged the windows, roofs and ceilings of the main buildings. ‘The general scene was one of appalling devastation.’57 The entire Antirrhinum (snapdragon) crop, used for genetics research, was destroyed, and other crops grown for breeding work were also damaged. Only the books that were still in the library remained intact. So-called ‘cloudy glass’ was not available to reglaze the glasshouses until the following November.

  In 1940, fear of potential bomb damage had led the Institution’s Director to urge the Board of Trustees to make plans for temporary evacuation, if there was an emergency, with the idea that this might become a permanent move in time. Waterperry House outside Oxford, at that time leased to the Waterperry School of Horticulture for Women, was the chosen option. In early 1941, the JIHI began negotiations to secure the lease, for it looked to be a very attractive proposition, not least because of the link with Oxford University. Miss Havergal and Miss Sanders, the two Principals of the gardening school, took fright, not surprisingly, since the JIHI’s Board of Trustees did not seem very alive to the difficult position into which they had been thrown, and the negotiations eventually foundered on the question of legal liabilities to the School of Horticulture.58 So the Institution stayed at Merton until after the war. In 1949, it moved to Bayfordbury in Hertfordshire, where Lawrence designed state-of-the-art glasshouses. Waterperry continued to be a school that trained women gardeners until 1971.

  Long Ashton Research Station in north Somerset was founded even earlier than the JIHI, in 1903. Because of its geographical position, and the interests of the local landowner, Robert Neville Grenville, who endowed it, Long Ashton was originally mainly concerned with research into commercial cider apple growing and making. This remit gradually widened to embrace hardy fruit generally, including the study of their pests and diseases.

  In 1918, the research station set up a Domestic Preservation Section at Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire. This establishment did very important work on developing precise standards and procedures for bottling, canning and preserving fruit and vegetables, and transmitting this knowledge to the housewife with a succession of books and teaching courses. Home Preservation of Fruit and Vegetables was first published in 1929, and went through a number of editions and impressions up to 1982. Its usefulness in wartime, both to the housewife and to Women’s Institute organisers and speakers, can scarcely be overstated.

  In the years before the war, the Long Ashton scientists invented ‘Ribena’ (see Chapter Twelve), made great strides in the visual diagnosis of nutrient deficiencies and excesses in fruit, and also investigated and tested effective pesticides. For example, the discovery that ‘leaf scorch’ in fruit trees was caused by a deficiency of potassium had a far-reaching impact on commercial fruit production, and the scientists also carried out highly influential work on which soils were most suitable for fruit growing. The station undertook research into plant nutrition of farm crops and vegetables as well as fruit, and the entomologists investigated ways of dealing with wireworm, which was a scourge when grassland was turned to plough – and lawns to vegetables – so had a direct bearing on both agriculture and horticulture in wartime. Much of this research had just reached the practical application stage when war broke out.

  Other important work carried out at Long Ashton during the war centred on plant hormones and the development of artificial growth substances, in particular ‘hormone rooting powder’, used to stimulate rooting in cuttings. The scientists also investigated, in tandem with East Malling research station, ‘reversion’ in blackcurrants. Long Ashton discovered that this disease was caused by a virus, while East Malling concluded that ‘reversion’ virus was transmitted from bush to bush by the ‘big bud mite’. The beneficial effect of all this research work on both gardeners and horticultural commercial concerns in wartime and after is incalculable but substantial.

  In late December 1944, when the war was won but not yet over, The Gardeners’ Chronicle printed a slightly sour leader which began:

  Farmers have received unstinted praise for their magnificent contributions to the national food supply during wartime, and deservedly so. Allotment holders have also had a good press, and their work has been lauded by Ministries and in every newspaper throughout the land. But professional gardeners have received scant praise and little encouragement from the powers that be, although the latter have not hesitated to seek the advisory services of the former, mostly without pay.59

  The writer then computed the annual contribution in vegetables from allotments at something less than £10 a plot, and therefore £17,250,000 as an estimate of the total value of food produced by allotmenteers per annum in wartime. However, continued the leader, professional gardeners were probably cultivating three times as much land as allotment holders, and because they were trained gardeners, their output was probably twice as high. In other words, professional gardeners might well have produced six times as much for the national larder as allotmenteers – and deserved national recognition for it. Even if the calculations are impossible to verify, it is equally impossible to quarrel with that conclusion. Curiously, the leader did not mention the contribution of commercial operations, especially flower nurseries and long-established market gardens, but as we shall see, that was also substantial and sometimes achieved at great personal cost.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FAR MESSIER AND DIFFERENT

  One morning [19 October 1939] Bunyard1 said to me that we would deal with library business in the afternoon. He never came back which was not surprising. When on Air Raid Precautions this early morning someone showed me a new
ly arrived newspaper reporting the death of a noted rosarian, E. A. Bunyard. ‘Did I know him?’

  I went up to the R.H.S. and unfortunately it was true. He did not normally carry a revolver but kept it in a drawer except when he went out to his orchard to shoot bullfinches, those lovely pests of fruit trees in bloom. Evidently he had brought it to London with a set purpose. He went to the Royal Societies Club and there shot himself.2

  E. A. BUNYARD was not the only nurseryman to feel bleak about his future at the outbreak of war, and probably not the only one to take his own life. But he was a particularly important loss to horticulture: his knowledge of fruits and roses was encyclopaedic, he was a highly skilled communicator and, before he developed money troubles, had given much time freely to help the Royal Horticultural Society. He exemplified the best, most public-spirited kind of nurseryman, the sort who would have an important part to play in wartime, sitting on the County War Agricultural Executive Committees and giving expert, disinterested advice.

  Bunyard had known from his experience of the First World War that commercial nurseries do badly when wars are fought, however much amateur gardeners wish to continue to cultivate their gardens in peacetime ways. At the beginning of the Second World War, nurseries tried to continue business as usual, but most soon saw the necessity of moving over to food production, or were forced by the county War Ag to do so. In the process, they lost much rare and valuable stock, and usually money as well, since decorative plants could be sold for more than vegetables.

  The gardening writer Stephen Cheveley visited a local nurseryman just a week after war was declared:

  There we were, surrounded by his gardens, full of autumn flowers, and he puzzling as to what crops he should grow to keep the place alive during the war. The greenhouses must go for tomatoes. The land would have to carry onions, salad crops, and perhaps cauliflowers and other brassicas. But the big problem was that the place was not laid out on a sufficiently large scale to permit using horses, and the necessary implements, even if he had them. All the work was done by hand and it would not pay to produce vegetables entirely by hand labour.