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Q&A with Senior Gardener India Sida-Murray


It’s #NationalGardeningWeek so we sat down with our Senior Gardener India Sida-Murray to chat all things gardens, from top tips to first memories. 


What’s your favourite garden at Harewood ?

My favourite part of the garden has got to the Walled Garden because I spend so much of my time there. There are so many parts of it to explore and every season brings a new delight to see. We have delicate snake’s-head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) coming up in the orchard at the moment and the new-season hop shoots are making an appearance. There’s radish going in the vegetable plots and wild flower seeds germinating in the meadow. It is teaming with spring growth and I cannot wait to see it all verdant and buzzing again.

What’s your favourite time of year in the gardens ?
That’s a difficult one for a gardener because every new season is my favourite. The excitement of spring with the waft of fresh green growth in the chilly morning air, which warms during the day to newly mown grass. The abundance of summer brings gluts to vegetables and luscious full buckets of flowers. The soil is teaming with activity and the garden is full of visitors. Late summer into Autumn has such a romantic feel here. We enjoy the last of the vibrant colours as the garden comes to a magnificent crescendo. The final flourish of glowing Autumn tones reflects over the lake as if it is on fire and the migrating birds dance upon it before their final flight. Winter, most surprisingly, is our busiest time as a team. We work hard to prepare the garden for the coming year and many hours are spent reflecting and plotting for the future. While the garden sleeps we are full of excitement and anticipation, in the hopes that our careful planning and ambitions for the next season come to fruition.

What’s the best gardening tip you’ve ever received ?
You can’t grow everything all at once. It is very tempting to order everything in the catalogue you want to grow and get overwhelmed. Choose a few new things each year so you can spend the time really looking and understanding your new plants, as well as feeling confident at the ones you have already mastered. This is how you develop your craft; observation, patience and practice.

What are your first memories of gardening?
My parents took us to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight every year when I was small. Queen Victoria had nine children and each one had their own vegetable plot and set of tools with their initials engraved. I also come from a big family and this was so thrilling to me as a child. I have fond memories of my mother lifting our big perambulator onto the horse and cart that took you down to Swiss Cottage and the children’s gardens there. I was lucky enough to eventually work at Osborne and the feeling of excitement and kinship never wore off.

What advice would you give to a new gardener?
Keep going. If seeds don’t germinate, sow again. If a plant is sulking in a particular spot, then move it. If the rabbits eat it all, try another tact. So much of being a gardener and in fact gardening itself is about promise. It’s making plans for future days, for a future you, for a future garden. Don’t be put off by failures, just keep going and eventually you will look back and be amazed by what you have accomplished.

Q&A with Head Gardener, Trevor Nicholson

Trevor Nicholson, Head Gardener at Harewood House

It’s #NationalGardeningWeek so we sat down with our Head Gardener Trevor Nicholson to chat all things gardens, from top tips to first memories.

What’s your favourite garden at Harewood ?
That’s a difficult one! I love all the gardens at Harewood, the Terrace gardens with the magnificent Italian parterre, stunning flower borders, fountains, and the huge sub-tropical border; the Walled Garden with its fantastic productive kitchen garden, hops, orchard, meadow and lovely herbaceous borders; and of course, the amazing Himalayan Garden with the beautiful waterfall, gorge, rock garden and wonderful drifts of primulas, rhododendrons, trees and shrubs. Restoring and developing each of these gardens has been a huge part of my life over the past 30 years. If I had to pick a favourite then it would have to be the Himalayan Garden, because I love plants, mountains, and wild places, and it reminds me of all the incredible wild places I’ve explored in China and the Himalayas and the wonderful native plants I found there.

What’s your favourite time of year in the gardens ?
Springtime, especially April and May when all the amazing rhododendrons come into flower around the beautiful lakeside, and when so many trees are flowering then. I love the fresh green of young oak leaves and seeing the oak apples starting to blush; and of course, who doesn’t adore the swathes of bluebells in the woods at Harewood? Spring is also when we sow our seeds and get plants in the ground too, so it’s an incredibly busy time for all gardeners.

What’s the best gardening tip you’ve ever received?
Gosh! There are so many. If I hadn’t taken sound advice from so many wonderful people, I wouldn’t be where I am now. We follow ‘no-dig’ practices in the Walled Garden now, but we used to sow vegetable seed directly onto the ground in carefully prepared seed drills. The soil at Harewood contains tiny clay particles, so after it rained the soil would develop a thin crust on top as it dried called a ‘cap’ which can stunt or distort seedlings as they try to push through the crust. To avoid problems from the soil ‘capping’ over the seedlings, my old tutor advised me to lightly cover the seeds in the drills with sieved potting compost mixed with sand. No capping. No distortion. Genius!

What are your first memories of gardening?
My dad was a gardener and so was his. Being from the north, gardening was big in our family, but not the posh, showy kind of gardening, it was allotment gardening, the proper kind where growing food in whatever space you had was the absolute norm throughout my formative years. We cooked and ate all the vegetables we grew and composted all the green waste. All our neighbours did it. We lived in a row of old railway workers’ cottages next to a disused railway, where the embankments had been turned into allotments by the locals for growing food. Weeding – between rows of leeks or onions or carrots – was just what you were expected to do as a kid. In the holidays we used to visit local gardens and parks. I can’t remember a time when gardening wasn’t part of my life.

What advice would you give to a new gardener?
My advice would definitely be to join a network of gardeners, such as the Professional Gardeners’ Guild or the Walled Kitchen Gardens Network, or your regional Gardens Trust etc. You will not only find genuinely kind and helpful people, but you will also have the opportunity of joining organised visits all over the country to some fantastic gardens and behind-the-scenes tours of some amazing projects. You’ll learn from seasoned professionals who are more than willing to share their advice. Follow your interests too, there are some wonderful plant societies out there, which are run by very knowledgeable people.

Reframing Reynolds

Counting down to Christmas with Lights4fun

This festive season, the facade of the House has been transformed into a magical, illuminated advent calendar with the help of our Christmas supporter Lights4fun. As we count down to Christmas, we take a look back at how the advent calendar was created.

‘We’ve dreamed of turning the façade of the House into an advent calendar for years, as it very conveniently has 24 windows and we’re delighted to have been able to create this beautiful advent calendar this year with the generous support from Lights4fun’ says Zoë Hughes, Artistic Producer at Harewood House Trust.

The journey began with a team of dedicated Harewood volunteers adding baubles to the Lights4fun garlands – there were over 100 to decorate and the overflow café area was soon overflowing with decorated garlands!

Once decorated, it was time to hand over to our facilities team, who created special frames which needed to be strong enough to withstand the Yorkshire winter, without damaging the historic house.

Of the construction process, Operations Manager Richard Smith comments:

“When initially asked by our creative team to look at carrying out the install, I wasn’t sure it could be done due to the historic nature of the building and its grade 1 listed status. However, after discussing with my team and the contractors responsible for the install, we were able to come up with a design for the frames and a system to fix them in place that would allow them to be installed safely and securely whilst also being non-invasive. The garlands supplied by Lights4fun were extremely easy to use and incredibly effective when lit up, which makes the front of the house look amazing and a real focal point for visitors”

 

A close up of the frame – the frames sat very carefully within the windows to not damage the House

Each window is lit up by a spotlight

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once all 24 frames and garlands installed, it was time to add all the numbers in and a big light switch on and Harewood is delighted to finally see the advent calendar brought to life. Seeing the beautiful lit garlands and giant gold numbers has been an incredible moment, seeing the team’s creative designs become a reality.

Photo credit Oliver Perrott

 

Harewood’s Festive Season
Sat 12 Nov–Mon 2 Jan
Tickets available at harewood.org

Our sparkling Christmas supporter
Christmas at Harewood is generously supported by Harrogate-based Lights4fun, bringing even more sparkle to the twinkling grounds throughout the festive season.

The Gift of a Green Turtle

Whilst exploring Harewood’s Old Kitchen, visitors may notice an unusual decoration perched above one of its cooking ranges – a large shell belonging to a green sea turtle. In this article, Harewood’s volunteer researcher, Olivia Wyatt, and Curator, Beckie Burton, discuss the turtle shell’s wider significance and a recent discovery in the archive.

An intriguing letter, written by William Bishop to John Wood Nelson in the summer of 1800, was recently discovered in the Lascelles family’s West Indian archive held at the Borthwick Institute in York. It reads: 

“I send a very fine Green Turtle of 75 lbs weight, which, through you, I beg may be forwarded in my name for Lord Harewood’s acceptance and […] another very fine Green Turtle of nearly 50 lbs weight which I must request you will do me the kind favour of placing on your own table.”

The letter raises many questions. Who was William Bishop? Why did he send several sea turtles halfway across the world from Barbados to Britain? And why might the recipients want to ‘place them on their table’? The answers reveal the historic cultural and social significance of the Caribbean green sea turtle, as well as help us to understand the ways in which the Lascelles family managed their West Indian plantations.

 

Turtle for the table

Green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) are native to tropical and subtropical waters around the world, including the Caribbean region. During the eighteenth century turtles were an important source of food for island inhabitants, providing the native, free and enslaved populations with meat, eggs and oil. Turtle meat was also used to ‘revive’ famished Africans arriving on slaving ships. European colonists learned about the nutritional benefits of the green sea turtle from the indigenous Miskitu people of eastern Nicaragua and Honduras, and many Europeans initially believed turtles possessed magical medicinal qualities.

The culinary reputation of the sea turtle inevitably spread via colonial trade networks to Europe, with live turtles shipped across the Atlantic in large tubs of seawater to ensure their ‘freshness’ upon arrival. Dishes such as turtle soup were created, which involved boiling and baking turtle meat with varying combinations of vegetables and spices; the bestselling eighteenth-century cookery book The Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse contained several turtle recipes, such as how to prepare it ‘the West India Way’. Turtles were rare commodities in Europe, and as such its meat came to be considered a delicacy. Turtle dishes developed a reputation as high-status cuisine, available only to those with access to global trade and its closed systems of communication, transport and finance. Accordingly, serving a dish containing turtle at the dinner table implied a level of status and wealth, and became a way for hosts to show off and impress guests.


The turtle shell hanging in the Old Kitchen at Harewood today almost certainly belonged to a turtle that was consumed in the House or possibly at an external event hosted by the family; for instance, Edwin Lascelles, the builder of Harewood House, is recorded as having provided a ‘Turtle-feast’ to the ‘gentlemen of [his] neighbourhood’ in ‘Chapel-Town’ in 1767. In fact, the presence of several turtle shells in Harewood’s wider collection reveals an eager consumption of this high-status commodity by the Lascelles family. The shells themselves were kept for decorative purposes, a culinary trophy that continued to hold prestige and intrigue even after the turtle itself was gone.

The gift of a green turtle, then, was one of cultural capital, offering prestige and status to its new eighteenth-century owners. It is also representative of the broader context of exploration, conquest and enslavement that defined British colonialism. William Bishop’s turtles would have been shipped alongside other desirable Caribbean products such as sugar and rum, their production enabled by the systematic trade and exploitation of enslaved African Caribbean people. This was a trade that the Lascelles family dominated, and were amongst its most successful beneficiaries. 

But who were the individuals involved in this particular transaction of turtles and what was their relationship?

 

A transaction of turtles 

By 1800, the Lascelles family managed a network of 24 Caribbean plantations located across several Caribbean islands: Barbados; Jamaica; Trinidad; and Grenada. However, their business interests were administered from Britain, relying on a hierarchy of managers to carry out day-to-day operations on both sides of the Atlantic. Both William Bishop and John Wood Nelson (the second recipient of a turtle after ‘Lord Harewood’, later 1st Earl of Harewood) were a part of this system.  

Nelson was a senior partner in the Laselles family’s London commission house, a business established to sell products (such as sugar) shipped over from Lascelles family plantations. Bishop was Nelson’s counterpart in Barbados, appointed to oversee the running of family estates on the island. Men based in the Caribbean such as Bishop were known as ‘attorneys’ and were responsible for reporting back to the commission house; it took approximately two months for letters to arrive by ship from the Caribbean to London, so it was essential for the Lascelles family to hire powerful and trustworthy individuals to deal with immediate problems on plantations, such as uprisings. In the mid-1790s, William Bishop was selected as an attorney because he had been born in Barbados and belonged to a prominent family with pre-existing connections to the Lascelles family; he had also already served as interim governor of Barbados from 1793-94. By 1800 – the date of this gift of turtles – Bishop had risen to the prestigious position of President of the Barbados Council.

Close up of a letter between William Bishop and John Wood Nelson showing a date stamp

Bishop’s letter is dated 18 July, but the red stamp on the envelope, dated 26 September, indicates that it was received by Nelson over two months later. (Photograph by Olivia Wyatt)

This hierarchical management structure explains why Bishop wrote a letter to Nelson to request that his gift of a turtle was “forwarded in [his] name for Lord Harewood’s acceptance”. As Lord Harewood’s main contact, Bishop needed Nelson to physically present the turtle, though he was keen to ensure he received due credit as the sender. Interestingly, Bishop was also obliged to send Nelson himself a turtle, understanding the importance of impressing both Lord Harewood and a senior partner within a bureaucratic management system. In fact, the dismissal of Bishop’s predecessor, John Prettyjohn, for incompetence may have increased his desire to make a good impression. Nevertheless, the not-so-subtle size difference between the two turtle gifts – Lord Harewood’s being 25 lbs larger – demonstrates Bishop’s acknowledgement of the difference in status and authority between the two recipients.  

In this context, then, the gift of a green turtle can also be seen as a calculated act of professional point-scoring. It is unknown whether Lord Harewood or Nelson acknowledged their extravagant gifts, though it is certain they would have been gladly received.

 

Olivia Wyatt and Beckie Burton, 2022.