Charisma has the capacity to conceal a multitude of sins. My response to Bill Clinton’s worn-out, moronic mantra, abbreviated in the title of this piece, is that money is only useful if there is something to buy and somewhere to buy it – two conditions that the multitude of humans inhabiting coastal cities and low-lying areas of the world will have difficulty in applying as this century draws on to its inevitable conclusion.
Gardeners must have an eye to the future, even if in practice they are grounded in the present. Did Osgood McKenzie possess an accurate vision of how his Inverewe garden might look in the twenty-first century? Probably not, though when he began planting trees on his barren, storm-torn estate in north-west Scotland he must have been aware of the potential.
Optimism is in short supply these days. Donald Trump is President of the United States of America and Britain is poised on the starting line of a foot-shooting exercise that makes Monty Python’s Twit of the Year event look like a Mensa qualifying competition.
So why plant trees? And, when so many humans are still struggling to find enough food to eat, what is the justification for converting farmland to garden, as we have done here in rural Aberdeenshire? Also, in a connected conundrum, how should I have answered the garden visitor who responded to my enthusiasm for growing Rhododendron species from seed by saying that she didn’t have time to wait.
Dealing with the last question first, ‘wait for what?’ might have been an appropriate, albeit provocative, rejoinder. For her question implies some sort of finite, future time slot when the process is finished. True, nothing lives forever, though I don’t think that was the conclusion she was anticipating; and I don’t think that gardeners are in the business of waiting.
Ok, it may take sixteen or seventeen days for the rhododendron seed to germinate but from the moment those two tiny leaves appear above the surface of the compost – voila, a rhododendron. Depending on which species it may take an additional fifteen years before the plant produces a flower, but every day of that process brings satisfaction to the person who planted the seed. And as anyone whose knowledge of the genus encompasses more than a familiarity with the Cartlandesque, hardy hybrids – wonderful in their own right - rhododendrons offer much more than just flowers. Visit Inverewe if you are in doubt – or Arduaine, Crarae or any other west coast garden of note.
Gardens are never finished – except when buried in concrete; even the set-piece parterre style, as successfully reproduced at Pitmedden, offers seasonal variation. One might contrast the art of horticulture to that of the painter. His or her paint, when dry, results in a fixed image, whereas the gardener’s paint has a life of its own, flowing in unpredictable ways, producing unlooked-for pictures that change from year to year.
Plant a hundred acorns and you are unlikely to get a hundred oaks. Some will fail to germinate and of those that do, a proportion will struggle to out-compete their neighbours. Of the remaining dominant trees it can be guaranteed that no two look alike. But what one can guarantee with a degree of certainty is that these survivors, year on year, will attract a wealth of creatures that by no circumstance would have shown up in the potato field that has become your wood. The gardener’s paint not only has a life of its own, it attracts a kaleidoscope of other life that results in a multi-dimensional landscape of almost unimaginable complexity, ever fascinating, ever changing. I, for one, spend no time waiting.
Yet this tribute to biodiversity doesn’t necessarily answer all the questions raised above. The need for further explanation was brought home to me just a few weeks ago when I was asked by a good friend, ‘what is biodiversity?’
With the benefit of hindsight this is not an unreasonable question. I have been fascinated by the science of ecology from an early age and should not expect everyone else to share that interest. Had this gentleman been discussing any of his areas of expertise I might have been equally in the dark.
But at the time, knock me over with a trowel, I thought – is this much-respected comrade an incarnation of Dylan’s Mr Jones? That seemed unlikely; he certainly is not a thin man (I am, and in this debate-quashing era of political correctness it appears to be quite ok to compare my physique with a long-handled gardening implement but not to allude to the increasingly familiar shape with, say, reference to a brewery container).
Why is it that ‘something is happening but you don’t know what it is’? Is all else drowned out by Brexit and Trump’s tweet of the day? Dylan, in his Ballad of a Thin Man, was almost certainly not singing about the physical stature of his anti-hero. This apparent digression simply serves to illustrate the ability of the media to shape public discourse and distract from weightier matters. I have the stomach for controversy though no wish to cause offence.
Surprised, and slightly flustered by my friend’s inquiry, I came up with the metaphor of a net: the more connections in the warp and the smaller the spaces in between, the stronger the net. Thus it is, I suggested, in the natural world. The larger the number of organisms in an ecosystem, the smaller the chances there are of any disruptive element – predator or parasite, for example – of destroying that system. A healthy environment is biologically diverse, within which a wealth of different organisms ensures an optimum of checks and balances. The antithesis of biodiversity, I continued, is the monoculture, a method of farming that is only sustainable in the short term through the use of chemicals that further reduce biodiversity in the soil that supports the crop.
No-one can blame the farmer who has been encouraged to apply the method, to increase his acreage, to invest in larger machinery and extend his loan to the bank. This, he has been told, is the only way forward – to increase his yields, to remain profitable. And it is what most of his neighbours are doing. ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’
Short-termism is the prevailing philosophy. Brexit is only being discussed in terms of jobs and the economy, by almost all sides of the argument. Even the online petition producers seem locked into the same straightjacket. Has everyone forgotten the formative rationale for European union? Has there ever been a greater need for global co-operation and harmony?
But now, in pre-Brexit Britain, where a substantial proportion of farm income takes the form of subsidy, we are told by our completely reliable Minister of the Environment that, once out of Europe, subsidies will not be paid in proportion to acreage, but rather as a consequence of how the farmer uses his land.
Furthermore, as the ICCC has just announced that the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached a point not seen in the last three million years, and that the window of opportunity for doing something about it is almost closed, it seems reasonable to assume – in spite of the millions invested annually by the denial industry – that something might change.
At this point in time, planting trees appears to be one of the best approaches to decarbonising the atmosphere. Also, as the livestock industry is second only to the burning of fossil fuels as contributor to anthropogenic climate change, it would also appear that the unsustainability of modern farming practice is more than just a myth perpetuated by a super-annuated hippie.
In this context, the conversion of farmland to garden seems less of a heresy – perhaps just a form of diversification. But I would argue that there are more reasons for doing what we have done here at Airdlin Croft.
First off, within the protective environment of our shelterbelts, in the lea of our hedges, behind the wind barrier of our wood, we have this year harvested thirty different kinds of vegetable – from asparagus to zucchini – and eleven different fruit crops; most of which could not have succeeded in the wide, wind-whipped spaces of the Buchan farmscape. And though it was just before my time, I remember it being said that the war-time Dig for Victory campaign demonstrated that the intensively cultivated allotment produced more food per acre than the most productive of farms.
Secondly, apart from the climate-changing consequences of livestock production, growing crops to feed to animals to feed to humans is an inherently inefficient way to feed a burgeoning human population.
Climate change offers another incentive for encouraging biodiversity. Many of our familiar native plants and animals are on the move. So while global warming is not of itself responsible for the onslaught of ‘new’ pests and diseases that threaten the landscape – the chief culprit is global trade – nevertheless it has a role to play. Will, for example, the ash go the same way as the elm? And is ‘native’ a concept that needs down-playing? After all, the category as currently framed only tends to consider the last ten thousand year, post-glacial period in its definition - a fraction of the ICCC’s three million years.
And climate change is directly responsible for a species shift that birdwatchers cannot fail to notice: great white egret this year at Loch of Strathbeg; cranes nesting near New Pitsligo. Whatever next?
Our super-intelligent species is wiping out life-forms that we haven’t even had time to identify, let alone evaluate their role in the global ecosystem, or even their potential use to humans, as food source or medicine. Why not take advantage of the plant-hunters’ spoils, especially here in Scotland? Many of these guys were, and are, of Scottish descent.
And yet, in my view, there is an even more compelling justification for transforming three and a half of my neighbour’s three and a half thousand acres. The clue lies in the wisdom of that most-owned, least-read text, the Bible: ‘man (a generic term, I hope) does not live by bread alone.’ That is to say, gardens can offer a therapeutic value that transcends the more obvious physical benefits – an insight I once might have interpreted as idiosyncratic, but now, having been encouraged to open our plot to the public under the aegis of Scotland’s Garden Scheme, recognise to be almost a universal.
I hesitate to differentiate physical from spiritual – from my perspective the distinction is invalid. But whatever the terminology, the outcome defies denial. On our open days I tend to man the nursery, a halfway point in the tour where I can read the smiling faces and soak up the positive commentary. Is Eden in our genes? Is it really surprising that in this angst-ridden world of our own creation that an attempt at Paradise (literally ‘an enclosed space’) should not provide for some basic need?
Now I am not for one moment suggesting that the country’s farmland be subdivided into tiny plots. But gardens can have a role to play in the necessary evolution of land use. And I would certainly support the re-evaluation of gardens and the profession of gardener in the twenty first century.
One initial target might be an attempt to persuade the National Trust for Scotland to take its horticultural heritage more seriously. And since they might legitimately claim that they can’t get the staff I would encourage the Holyrood government to reallocate part of the education budget to the colleges which once had a horticultural faculty. And in order for that to happen, gardening needs to become a properly paid and seriously respected profession.
No horticulturist should experience the response I received when, at a social function recently I replied to the question, ‘what do you do?’ When I informed one good lady that I was a gardener, she said ‘well, someone has to do it, I suppose.’ And, from a besuited gentleman of commerce: ‘well, I guess that’s ok.’
It is more than ok, I thought. I would argue that it is the best job in the world. But I remembered Mr Dylan’s immortal lines: ‘Businessmen they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth. But none of them, along the line, know what any of it is worth.’
That state of affairs, I would suggest, needs to change – and fast.