Paths to the future

10:32am Thursday 22nd November 2007

VAL BOURNE plots a new landscape and discovers the roots of the scarecrow

There are lots of gardeners who hang up their tools in October and only emerge again in spring. But there are always things that can only be accomplished in winter. It's the ideal time to think about your hard landscape, to lay paths and patios on frost-free days. Or, if you're inept on the do-it-yourself front like me, to get someone in. I've just had some paths laid in my vegetable patch and I'm waiting for some untreated wood so that I (or rather we') can make four raised beds.

My slabs are conservation grade, made from reconstituted materials. After all, in the age of green gardening, it's hard to justify Indian sandstone with its attendant air miles and the damage it does to the landscape. The four paths have given me four raised beds and these are ideal in vegetable gardens. If they are small enough to lean over you don't have to walk on the soil. Continually trampling, to harvest crops or plant, ruins the soil structure and stops things growing. This happens because compacted soil holds lots of water which can't drain away. Therefore the soil can't warm up and roots can't penetrate either.

Raised beds aren't new. Susan Campbell, writing in her fascinating book The History of Kitchen Gardening (published by Frances Lincoln), tells us that Tudor gardeners relied entirely on the raised bed system. She also mentions that the Romans used them too, having adopted the system from older civilisations.

The great market gardeners who supplied London in the late 18th century often worked on raised beds, although it depended on the crop. The paths were just wide enough to allow a man to kneel down and the beds never more than double the length of a man's arm. My beds are larger and I will have to use a plank or two, but the no-tread idea is the same.

Records show that cabbages were grown all over Battersea, onions at Deptford, peas in Kent, turnips in Norfolk and the banks of The Thames grew a whole range of plants on 10,000 acres. This turned over an annual income of £645,000 from vegetables and £400,000 from fruit - and this was in 1798. Fruit nurseries covered Hammersmith, Bethnal Green, Hackney, Hoxton and Whitechapel. Mortlake was famous for its asparagus and, as the city expanded, the market gardening area moved outwards. I can clearly remember the market gardens that used to exist close to Heathrow when I was a child.

I also intend to make a scarecrow for next spring. The Worzel Gummidges of horticulture also have an ancient past. Classical gardeners kept effigies of the god Priapus, symbolised by his maleness', to ensure fertility. Often these effigies were fashioned from fig trees and they were always given an apron to hide their "rampant, private parts", Susan Campbell tells us. The effigy was placed in the middle of the garden and rocket was grown close to the effigy and fed to sluggish husbands'.

It's a strange comfort to know that women had the same crosses to bear thousands of years ago and I shall be ordering several packets and guess where I'll be planting them!

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