Country Life
Deadly spring
Patrick Marnham
The Small tarden by Brigadier C. E. Lucas Phillips was first published in 1952. It is now in its fourteenth impression and Pan claim to have sold more than 250,000 copies of this 'classic book' on general gardening. In town and country people study this influential work and then go outside and follow its advice. Then their gardens grow.
The Brigadier has a military style. The chapter on garden tools is called 'The Gardener's Armoury', that on pests and diseases is headed 'Know your Enemy'. The last is an important section because the modern gardener, like the farmer, is obsessed with insects and blights. Hybrid seeds which are all the rage are particularly feeble in the face of competition; their feverish response to inorganic feeds leaves them no reserves of vigour. So, after the standard warning about dangers to children and pets, the Brigadier gets down to business. First the insecticides pyrethrum and derris are recommended as safe, then comes the stronger stuff such as the insecticide malathion and the fungicide captan. And finally, for those who like it neat, there is mention of BHC and DDT.
Naturally there is nothing 'eccentric' about the Brigadier's recommendations. Almost every mainstream gardening book plugs these preparations, which are prominently displayed in the gardening department, or chamber of horrors, of most general stores. But it is instructive to check this list of poisons in the index of another best selling paperback which was published ten years after the Brigadier's but which,
though even more famous, does not seem to enjoy the same influence. Silent Spring by
Rachael Carson must be one of the most widely-read and (by gardeners) leastheeded books of the day. With regard to pyrethrum and derris (both of which are derived from natural sources) Miss Carson awards her highest accolade: she describes them as 'less toxic than other inorganic compounds'. Of malathion, she notes its popularity among gardeners and lists cases where its characteristic effect of inducing muscular weakness has crippled them; malathion it seems has the capacity to des
troy the protective sheath covering the sciatic and spinal nerves. As for DDT, the fact that it is now banned in the USA must be counted as one of Silent Spring's few victories. Rachael Carson listed its effects on the human nervous system, its link with blood disease, its carcinogenic qualities and the increasing resistance to it shown in the insect world. But the Americans continue to manufacture DDT and they export it in vast quantities to the unsuspecting people of the Third World.
BHC in its original form is not yet banned, on the contrary it is widelyacclaimed, but the Brigadier notes that it may 'taint' vegetables and suggests that a new formulation called gamma-BHC may be safer. Gamma-BHC, it is not particularly reassuring to read in Carson, is stored in significant amounts in the brain. and the liver and is also capable of having a profound effect on the central nervous system. Earwigs, ants, wireworm, flea beetle, onion fly, cabbage root fly and woodlice do not like it much either. And there is now a well recognised link between BHC, gammaBHC and leukaemia. The earwigs etc., do not die alone.
The popular modern ideal of a garden looking like a parade-ground may be causing more cancer than any other feature of modern life. For instance one of the most popular garden weed-killers, aminotriazole, has according to Silent Spring, caused thyroid cancer in test animals. Over here this substance is sold as Weedex, and though there is naturally no proof that this preparation harms human health, it seems rather dashing of its manufacturers to describe it baldly as 'safe to use'. In the country of course you do not have to be a gardener to obtain your dose of these chemicals. On a windy day if your shrubbery adjoins farmland you may be gratified to see that you are getting your nettles poisoned for free. In the fields where the food comes from the problem of incidental poisoning is multiplied many times. And such a weight of poison has now been spread over the pastures that the law of diminishing returns is in operation and the chemical companies have been reduced to acknowledging this in their publicity. One recent advertisement which asserted the
benefits of a herbicide included a map which showed a serious increase of grass weeds in winter cereal fields. Meadow grass, rye gass and black grass are once more rampant and the answer, it seems lies in spreading ever greater quantities of the latest concoction over the crops. One comforting feature of the map was that Adlestrop, the village where Edward Thomas was inspired by the meadowsweet and willow herb, seems to be at the centre of the resistant area. Thomas would probably have been heartened to see this map and to have learnt that even the new-strength formulations with their guaranteed 95 per cent all-round kill factors have failed to prevent the variety of wild flora from doubling between 1970 and 1977.
Even Brigadier Phillips, with his limitless supplies of ordnance, cannot provide a solution for everything. He admits to having met his match in the common garden weed, ground elder. 'This brute', he writes, 'laughs at the hoe as love at the locksmith.' Quite true. Nor do any of the manufactured specifics have any effect on it. It would not be right to compare this distinguished and humorous old gentleman to the American General Curtis Lemay, who was going to bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age; but in one country garden at least, after three years of unceasing warfare, ground elder is beginning to bear some resemblance to the Viet Cong.
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