Gardens
Kicking against the pricks
Ursula Buchan
The garden can be a dangerous and unpleasant place. Scarcely a day passes in summer without reports of alarming often bizarre — accidents happening to people who simply wanted an afternoon's innocent exercise in the fresh air. Parts fly off lawn mowers, bamboo canes in borders blind the unwary, and colourful berries poison curious children.
Even if we, by the hand of Providence, escape those mishaps, we rarely come in from the garden victors in the battle against annual nettles or whippy rose stems. Blood flows freely and hands blister like old paintwork in the sun. These are occupational hazards, about which com- mitted gardeners learn to be philosophical while waiting patiently for their skin to harden. What puzzles me is that, with all those irritations, we are so prepared wilful- ly to introduce prickly, spiny, thorny plants into the garden. I am not suggesting we abandon roses, of course. We forgive all because of their flowers and take our chance with the prickles. We usually have the sense to grow comparatively thornless roses if we can: the enormous popularity of, for example, `Zephirine Drouhin' (a rose with a sham- bolic centre and a colour which is definitely the wrong side of pink) has much to do with its reputation as 'the thornless rose'.
That said, I do sometimes wonder if we think hard enough before buying other, less beautiful shrubs whose most memor- able quality is a spikiness as understated as a punk haircut. After all, nothing incenses me more than having to weed around a well-clothed pyracantha. Any mood of peaceful resignation engendered by gardening is quite spoiled by the sharp stabs which result from absentmindedly backing into a berberis. Most treacherous of spiny plants in my garden is Ribes speciosum, which has unusual and attrac- tive red, pendulous flowers at this time of year but which betrays its humble origins (a first cousin of the common gooseberry) by dropping little dead twigs, still armed to the teeth, in winter. These inevitably in- sinuate themselves between the nail and quick of fingers, a torture outlawed long ago by the Geneva Convention but which I regularly endure in the summer months.
It may have occurred to the alert reader that there is a perfectly simple remedy to torn hands, namely the wearing of a pair of thick, impenetrable gloves. However, an early training with gardeners who thought that gloves were for cissies, only to be used when handling sumach or paraquat (and then only to please the boss) has spoiled me for that. In any event, the thick glove has not been invented which bears more than a passing, tangential resemblance to the contours of one's hand, while kitchen rubber gloves are little defence against spiny plants, and anyway leave one without enough sensitivity to weed properly.
Of course, I am not suggesting that berberises (to take as example a particular- ly prickly genus) should never be planted, merely that one should take care about which ones to patronise. The worst offen- ders for prickles are the evergreen varieties, because they have thorns on both leaves and stems. Particularly widely planted, although not by me, are darwinii and verruculosa. The first has flowers which are orange (not bright yellow as the books allow) and the second grows slowly into a dumpy, glossy-green hump.
The deciduous ones usually have wicked spines only on the stems and there are forms to be had with interesting coloured leaves or good autumn colour. The red and silver-pink flecked young leaves of Berber- is thunbergii 'Rose Glow' and the crimson of 'Red Chief add to the sum of gaiety, and many people admire a yellow-leaved form called 'Aurea'. I do not myself care for it because the leaves turn green long before the autumn. For me the best de- ciduous berberis is B. temolaica, which has very pretty grey-blue bloomy leaves, pur- ple stems, and yellow flowers in spring. The combination is striking. Unfortunate- ly, it is slow to get going and is listed by only a few specialist nurseries.
I once admired a mature specimen of the deciduous Berberis wilsoniae at Kew Gar- dens and determined to have a shrub which had such quantities of coral-red fruits, as well as good autumn colour. Now I am screwing up my courage to kick it out of a mixed border, so bored am I with trying to pull the bindweed out from the middle of it. The solution may be to find it a place on a well-sprayed shallow bank where its informally prostrate form will suit the terrain. Other barberries which deserve garden room, like B. x rubrostilla and `Barbarossa', can be planted in the middle of shrub borders where they need never be approached except when a mulch is thrown in the direction of their roots in spring, to conserve moisture and keep the weeds down. Growing berberises in this way may not show them off to their very best advantage but at least it contributes some- thing towards making this world a safer place.
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