Lurking under that apparently innocuous title was a a wonderful collection of local history , gardening dynasties, strong businesswomen , foreign trade, economics and then a murder thrown in. Val took us back to the era of the nurserymen (and many nursery-women) in Chiswick, before the advent of cheap dung (trust me Val did indicate that was the reason for the change) which transformed the nurseries into the market gardens of the more recent past. Nurserymen had to keep their plants lean and hungry and not overwatered so that they produced good displays in their eventual locations. Strong winds and frost were the bane of nurserymen and the walled gardens are evident in the maps of Rocque 1720 and Milne 1820 – anyone gardening on the prairies of the Chertsey Road allotment will know the damage our winds can do.
Val has spent a lot of time at the National Archives in Kew, battling with eccentric spelling, repetitively folded deeds and wills and a very confusing family habit of retaining the same Christian name for several generations; endearing but not much fun when you are tracing the flow of property and relationships through a family. The profitability of the nursery businesses described was enormous; if one allows for historical inflation, the sums amassed were vast. The women involved were also intimately involved in both the gardening and business dealings and are extensively described on nurserygardeners.com.
The trade of new plants and seeds was not necessarily always inbound to London. Seeds were exported to Jamaica for homesick planters, one imagines customs control was more rudimentary in those days. The trade with the colonies was extensive and the fashion for fast growing pea varieties seems to have been popular with President Madison at his Monticello estate. It was the fashion to serve fresh peas very early in the spring, these Master Hots or Hotspur Peas appear to be extinct, though it would be interesting to taste a pea that goes from seed to pod in 6 weeks.
There was something here for everyone. Scrabble fan had the word pottle for a conical wicker container for soft fruit; the Pointless fan should always remember that the Williams Pear is named after Richard William of the Chiswick Nursery up by Turnham Green, and for the lovers of NCIS there was Henry Scott, who moved out to Weybridge and then proceeded to murder the constable, though mysteriously no record exists as to his fate, but one suspects it wasn’t pleasant.
Many thanks to Val Bott for a very entertaining and educational hour that was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone present.