Team day, as usual, but the difference today was that we were weeding tree circles in my area: Malus, Pirus, Crataegus…

I sat for a while under a large pear tree, pulling weeds from under its canopy. When I came out, my colleague went quiet and looked strange, his eyes on my back: “you have something on your back”.

A large moth was taking a ride. “A picture, take a picture…”, says I, and a few people tagged along with their mobiles too.

The moth did not seem inclined to leave me, so I carried on weeding, while it stood, parrot-like, on my shoulder. Luckily I’m not too fussed about this kind of things!

There it remained, until lunchtime, when we looked it up: eyed hawk-moth (Smerinthus ocellata) was its name. Not even the manager was immune from the fascination this large insect held on us. Unfortunately, in all the time it hung around, it never spread its wing so that we could see they eyes that give it its common name.

Smerinthus ocellata

Having left it on a log, I went back to my weeding. Another surprise was in store for me, inside a Crataegus. As I was trying to make my way under the specimen’s canopy, in fact, our teamleader for the day asked me if I wanted to see something interesting. Well, you can guess my reply!

Viscum album, main plant and seedling

Deep inside the branches, impossible to see if not directed, was a mistletoe (Viscum album). Its main stem came out of an hawthorn’s branch, almost indistinguishable from any other branch, it looked so at home there. A seedling emerged from the bark right next to it.

An interesting team day, this one was, in my area!

We visited the Pagoda today, such a symbol of Kew gardens!

I remember a few years ago the Pagoda was open to the public for a short period of time and I wanted to go but then did not manage to… but today we had our very own special tour.

The reason why the Pagoda is not open to the public is that the wooden structure may not support the flow of visitors, but there are plans to renovate it.

It was first built as a folly in the seventeen hundreds for princess Augusta, who wanted to make of Kew a paradise on earth, so commissioned various buildings to adorn it.

The Pagoda used to have golden dragons at its corners, and it costed the equivalent of £17,000 in today’s money. It was the tallest reconstruction of a Chinese building in Europe but, with its 10 storeys, it is architecturally inaccurate: pagodas always have an odd number of floors.

For me the biggest treat was to see the South Canal beds from up high: they look so gorgeous! And I could spot some of my most recent work even from there.

What is more, by finally seeing them in their whole entirety, I seem to have figured out their geography, which has helped already with my bad sense of direction in the gardens.

The South Canal beds extend from the Cedar vista (the grassed walkway  that  connects the Pagoda to the river Thames) to the tarmacked path that leads to the Pavillion restaurant, 

and from the Pagoda vista (the grassed walkway that connects the Pagoda to the Palm House) to the grassed path that flanks the western side of the Temperate House. It’s a trapezoidal area with 6 beds, tree each long side, with the ones on the corners V-shaped, that enclose an area with individually planted trees (Pyrus spp,  Malus spp and Crataegus spp).

It’s a large area, seen from up the Pagoda! No wonder I get tired walking around it, and I am losing so much weight 🙂

The South Canal beds

Since I have worked there so much, I also took a picture of the Japanese gateway. 

The Japanese gateway

Our guide for the trip was the arboretum (and my) manager, who has been in Kew since he was a teenager and worked his way up the career ladder. Having been in the gardens so long, he had some fascinating stories to tell us. A particularly quaint one, was that the area of the gardens where the yard is located and where I’m working, was a long time ago nicknamed “Alcatraz” and the gardeners who were least suited to be in contact with the public were sent to work there!

Tuesday team-working day today, we are weeding and mowing the lawn around the so-called “holly walk” – an area that has no dedicated gardener to it so is managed during team days. By the way, if you were wondering: how many gardeners in Kew? (a question several visitors ask me) The figure I got was some 50 gardeners (there are employees, the school of horticulture students, apprentices and trainees), with around as many volunteers (including interns). And we did have volunteer with us today, well, and myself.

As I had not used the mower for a while, and it was only my third time anyway (first and second) I checked I remembered all about how to operate it, and took a few pictures in the process. For a full description of what pre-start checks to do on a mower, I found this video rather useful.

Oil

Filter and petrol

The first general checks are: oil, petrol (full) and air filter (clean).

Spark plug cap removed

Fuel switch

The next check is the spark plug; it is usually disconnected when the mower is not in use.

Then, it’s the turn of the fuel switch. I was told the easy rule is that all power tools’ switches are on when in line with the pipe they are connected to, and off when at right angles.

Mowing height (back)

Mowing height (front)

The mowing height is the next check: when the grass is long, you start by mowing with a high cut, then you progressively reduce it. You want a lush green sward, you do not want to cut into the thatch. There are height controls both on the front wheels (2 of them) and on the back (one only).

You are now ready to start the engine. Our equipment has international symbols:

• stop (self explanatory)
• turtle (slow)
• hare (fast)

You don’t start on a turtle, otherwise the engine might struggle. So you push the lever towards the hare. Then you pull the string, until the engine starts. If it were a two-stroke engine (like the leafblower and the bowser) you would need a choke to help with cold start. But four-strike like the mower are ok as is.

The mower is ready but has to be pushed (quite heavy, but useful for doing difficult spots). And the blades are not engaged yet, so even when pushed it does not cut.

The controls of the blades and the self-propeller are the thinner handles. Pushing down the yellow button and the handle forward engages the blades (I find that the engine struggles if it’s on slow when you engage the blades). The outermost handle is the self-propeller. The speed to which the mower goes forward is linked to the engine power, so the slower the engine, the slower the propelling.

If you are not used to a self-propelled mower, it can run away with you, especially on tight turns, so it is always best to disengage the self-propeller before turning, and only re-engage it when the mower is again in a straight line with wherever you wish to go.

I found the most difficult bits are under tree branches when you are mowing around tree circles and you have to be careful that the branches don’t rebound on you if pushed apart (best if someone is around and holds on to the biggest branches) and that, having to bend under branches, the handles are released carefully when turning, because they are on a spring!

If your mower has a roller at the back, like ours, it will leave stripes on the lawn, that you have to try and keep even and straight. Sometimes it is difficult in particular light situations to see which stripe is which, but generally you know that the light stripe is in the same direction you are going now (because the grass blades were pushed down and you see the back of them), while the dark stripe is against you (because you are looking at the shaded bottom of the blades that were pushed down)… does that make sense? I particularly enjoyed making big stripes, which is when multiple mowers go side by side… but that is advanced skills, and I only tried once! 🙂

The last thing to do with a mower, is to check and empty the collector: when it is too full it leaves an unsightly trail of grass clippings as it goes!

Et voila… the perfect lawn-mowing…

We had a tour of the Palm House today, one of the few remaining greenhouses that were built with wrought iron, a revolutionary technique of its time, thanks to which the arcs of metal could span more distance.

It dates back to the 1840s, and sits next to the later Waterlily House that is managed together with it.

Besides the palms that give it its name, the collection covers the tropical rainforest, from north to south respectively: Asia, Americas & Africa (with some allowance made for the tallest plants to sit in the highest part).

At the moment a lot of emphasis is given to food crops as part of the IncrEdibles festival running this summer. We saw:

• Theobroma cacao the cocoa tree 
• Coffea spp the coffee plant which has recently been in the Kew news because of its threatened status in the wild (caused by land use and climate change) and whose family, Rubiaceae, despite being one of the least well-known contains quite a few economically important plants), and 
• the oil palm Elaeis sp. (did you know the oil comes from seeds?)

Pseudostem

• bananas (Musa spp), with its dangling purple male flowers that serve more of an aesthetic purpose than anything else – as they do not often fertilise the female ones, at the top, which turn into bananas. 

Flowers and bananas

We manage to get fruit nonetheless, because bananas are parthenocarpic, and that is an advantage from the commercial point of view because they do not contain viable seeds, but certainly not from an evolutionary one!. Interestingly, banans are not trees as such, they are herbs, and their stems are not woody stems, but soft and formed by the leaf sheets that are closely packed together. In the picture below, you can see it is sometimes necessary to keep them together with support bands!

Pineapple

Non-edible Zingiber

• pineapples, Ananas spp, which are very much the icon of this summer’s festival 
• various Zingiber, edible and non-edible ginger

Back to the fascinating history of the Palm House, we learnt that it was originally heated through burning coal in the Campanile at Victoria gate, which heated water that then ran in pipes in a tunnel to the House and then through the iron grating in the floor that are still visible today.

At the extremities of the house there are benches that were originally used for potting on, but now are display areas, plants are kept in pots to remind us of their original purpose. Some of the palms in those area, you will notice, are also planted in crates, which – besides being very convenient for potting on – are the way in which plants were originally displayed in the Palm House.

I must say I did love the Waterlily House in particular, because it was so cosy and planted with more foodcrops: ones I love in my own garden, like chilli and shark fin melons. It was also really exciting to see the underside of the leaves of Victoria cruziana, the giant waterlily, which have ribs that trap air to help them float and are spiny to fend off the attacks of fish: amazing plants…

Today I was trained in using a watering bowser, and then set off with a map of the gardens and a list of the recently planted trees to water. We only water those small trees that need to establish, generally the ones planted in the last two years.

I simply loved the experience, for two main reasons:

1. While the plant was being watered, I could observe it, and the plants around it. In fact, it is better to give a good soak to plants every so often than a quick watering all the time. So it takes 5-15 minutes depending on rate of water, size of tree circle and previous state of the soil, to give the plant a thorough watering and you only need to move the hose around at suitable intervals
2. I got to know the geography of the gardens and which plants are in which area (which, giving my precedents for getting lost, has been extremely useful!)

The areas I covered had mainly Leguminosae and conifers in them, and I enjoyed two plants in particular. 

A Robinia pseudo-acacia ‘Aurea’, whose foliage, against the blue sky, was really stunningly beautiful. And anyway I like robinias because they remind me of wood fire in the mountains, when I was a kid, and of my favourite streets in Milan.

A Larix laricina, or tamarack, which I had never seen before, and whose cones left me gobsmacked:  as beautiful as the best deep red rosebuds. 

I do not know much about conifers, had never considered them much, but working amongst them today gave me an opportunity to have a close look and realise that what we call mountain “pini” in Italy (with short needles and Christmas-tree shape) are actually mainly in the Abies and Picea genera, while only the maritime “pini” (with long needles and round canopy) are in the genus Pinus. Will have to investigate further. 

I also had time to observe Cupressaceae Thuja and Chamaecyparis up closer, which look almost identical at first sight; I think I have come to the conclusion that the former has flat scales on a flat branch, while the latter has somewhat raised scales on a flat branch. Will have to make sure some other day, as my watering time had run out.

Back to the bowser, it is fairly easy to use.

The bowser is a big tank with a pump to draw the water out of it and into the attached hose pipe. First of all, you have to attach it as a trailer to a tractor to carry it around.

Then you have to do general checks: 

Oil

Water tank

• Is the water tank full?
• Is the petrol tank full?
• Is there enough oil in it?

Having checked everything is ok, you have to take some fuel with you in a safe storage box and then set off to your daily duties.

Fuel switch

Fuel tank and choke

One has to turn on the safety fuel switch to allow fuel into the engine, as it will be off when not in use.

The bowser pump is two-stroke, so there is a choke to use for cold starts at the beginning of the day.

RPMs lever

On/off switch

The engine is regulated by the RPMs lever, which needs to be higher up than “turtle” (the slow setting) but not quite on “hare” (the fast setting) before you turn on the engine switch and then pull on the starting rope, every time yoo arrive to your location. When you are finished with it, you turn everything off and move on to the next plant.

To stretch the hosepipe to the length you need, you unroll it from the wheel and stop when you hear the cogwheel mechanism click into place. The water is released into the hosepipe when the lever is flush with the pipe.

Hosepipe release wheel

Water on/off lever

Well, that’s the techie bit sorted, and you get the rest of the time to enjoy the plants and the gardens: I’m really looking forward to the next time I have to water again!