AWAY: The Winter Garden, Battersea Park

& ode to a Barbour

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I lost my temper with the cold about 15 minutes from home. This happens sometimes in extreme hot (anything above 26c) and extreme cold (anything below 8c). I get furious. Does this happen to other people? Do other people conjure vivid, all-consuming rage out of cold, thin air?

My hands were freezing and I cursed myself for having picked up the perfect, Allium seed heads from the compost pile outside the Thrive garden. But really, what kind of lunatic throws these out? Haven’t they seen how

Arthur Parkinson

and Sarah Raven turn them into stunning, sustainable Christmas decorations? (Can’t you see already that in a few decades there will be books written about Sarah and Arthur’s creative partnership? Like the book about Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd’s letters that I started and then forgot about). Carrying the Alliums in one hand and dog leads in the other meant that neither hand was free to be shoved into the ‘immediate’ pockets of my Barbour.

Traditional Barbours have two types of pockets. The big ones that you fill with poo bags, dog treats, and shotgun cartridges (if you’re blood sport inclined), and the small ones - fleece lined - to shove your hands into on a cold day. The latter I think of as ‘immediate’ pockets, and the former as long-term storage. Nothing ever really comes out of the big pockets. They are lined with the years-old crumbs of dog biscuits and god knows what. The ‘immediate’ pockets are usually where I find my phone and iPods (loose pods and, separately, case) when I lose them (often).

I was well into my 30s when I realised that hats, scarves, and gloves serve a purpose beyond being fashion accessories. I know, that’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I was also 32 when I learned that eyelash curlers play an absolutely critical role in the make up bag. Basically I was quite an impractical person until recently. But today I hadn’t taken a hat, scarf, or gloves with me. And that was idiotic. Less the absent-minded professor than the absent-minded contessa, but anyway.

“In 15 minutes you’ll be warm,” I told myself, but it didn’t matter. And even as I sit typing this, about 30 mins after the fury began, practically setting my shins on fire with proximity to my blow heater, I am still radiating the cold that seems to have seeped into the fabric of my clothes, my skin, my bones, my very core.

But a few minutes before that, I was in heaven. I mentioned yesterday that I had stumbled across Dan Pearson’s Winter Garden in Battersea Park, so today I slung my proper camera over my shoulder and walked the dogs down to the new Sendero on the roundabout (Leo’s girlfriend Erica works there now, so this will be out new route), and then on to the Winter Garden to document my find.

If it seems like some/all of these photos are a little blurry it is because the Winter Garden is a dogs-on-leads area and you try taking a steady photo with one hand as two dogs are pulling in opposite directions in the other. I did my best. Just don’t zoom too much.

Becoming a gardener is like going to law school - you learn a whole new way of seeing things. I have walked past the little side gate into the Winter Garden thousands of times, and yet until recently it would have meant nothing to me. Have you heard the term ‘plant blindness’? I was completely plant blind until that day in May two years ago. But my eyes are open now.

And what they see in the Winter Garden is all the longed-for colour that February otherwise seems to deny.

Battersea Park is a 200-acre park that runs along the south bank of the River Thames opposite Chelsea. It is an incredible park, full of weird Victoriana, event spaces, play grounds, (famously on this blog) ParkRunners, and even a zoo. But the Winter Garden, the part of the park that is closest to my home is one area I have completely overlooked. Until now.

Carpeted in white periwinkle (Vinca minor Alba) and snowdrops, today the garden is lush, and green, and full of flowers and scent. Such a glorious treat as we reach the peak, despairing, endless grey of mid-February.

I shared the garden with three people. Two little boys (twins, probably) and their mum (probably) who played hide and seek around the central tree, an incredible Persian Ironwood (Parrotia persica).

Yesterday when I saw the incredible blossom tree, surrounded by Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’, I tried to used google to find out what it was. Today I discovered that some incredible, navel-gazing genius has created a TREE MAP of Battersea Park. And I can smugly announce that my google supposition was correct. It is Prunus mume 'Beni-Chidori' - a Japanese apricot tree - and quite the most beautiful blossom tree you ever saw.

Not to be outdone, the path through the garden is lined with Chaenomeles x superba - probably ‘Crimson and Gold’ - blasting their booming red petals all over their chaotic branches.

And the best smells? A tough call. The honey of the Lonicera fragrantissima, phwoar. The citrus peel of the Hamamelis x intermedia 'Vesna', aaaaaaah. The mystery spice of Chimonanthus praecox 'Luteus', mmmmm.

This raises the question: where is the line between ‘foraging’ and ‘stealing’? Because I really wanted to take some cut flowers home. In London, this is a true, moral dilemma. Because while on the one hand, a little foraging seems harmless, on the other if even a handful of people who live nearby to the garden decided to do the same, there would - in an instant - be no garden left…

Also, I’ve been meaning to ask, what about ‘foraging’ a clump of the abundant cow parsley that has self-seeded around the park? If I snuck in with a trowel, and dug up enough for two 9cm pots (one for my garden and one for my neighbour’s), how bad would that be, morally and ecologically? Is the enjoyment of the many (the thousands of probably plant blind visitors to the park) to be valued above the enjoyment of the two (me and my neighbour, Caro). Let me know.