OPENER / ANDREW TUCK
Growing up
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There are many odd things about rural England but driving around the picturesque Cotswolds last weekend I was struck by how many houses and pubs have plastic plants outside their front doors. In particular, those horrible topiary balls that swing in the wind while suspended from porches. Type “buxus balls” into a search engine and you’ll see what I mean (it may sound like I am directing you to a worrisome medical page but I promise that you will be perfectly safe). It’s hard to work out their appeal, especially when you are surrounded by real thrusting spring greenery. I see on one site that a particular benefit is that you can wash your buxus balls in a bucket if they get dirty. Again – who knew that that was a concern?
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And plastic window frames. Everywhere. Supposedly also easier to keep pristine – so why do they all look filthy?
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The weather seems to be in cahoots with the UK’s health authorities and has us trapped in a pattern that dims any of the delight of leaving your home. Hail! Rain! Crazy gusts of wind – and, no doubt, dislodged buxus balls rolling down country lanes. But on Monday, England allowed restaurants to reopen for indoor dining and it has been a very welcome step back to normality – and one which many people have decided to put on their sou’westers to head out and experience. I had dinner in Soho and what was so nice was just hearing that much-missed backing track of clinking glasses, gossip being shared, laughter.
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Last Saturday, on our Cotswolds excursion, we went to Hidcote Manor to visit the gardens created in the first half of the 20th century by the American major Lawrence Johnston. They were also the first gardens to be taken on by the National Trust when Lawrence signed them over in the 1940s. The steely skies meant that there were few visitors and it was sublime to walk between the various “rooms” demarcated by high hedges, babbling streams, topiary and pools. I have since read lots from various gardening geniuses harrumphing about changes to the gardens and how to correctly interpret their significance – they should just be grateful that the locals haven’t been allowed to introduce a selection of bucket-washable shrubs. But the other takeaway was how a wealthy person can create something that ends up being for the common good, that continues to give pleasure for years after their death. Hard to imagine that this idea even figures in the minds of today’s effortlessly rich.
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Naomi Campbell has a new baby. She’s 50. Too old? Unfair on her children who will never have a youthful mother? It’s all been picked over in the features pages of the newspapers. My mum was 45 when I was born, my dad 50. They already had four children by then and my eldest sister was in her twenties. I think it’s fair to say that another child was not quite what my parents had planned. And, yes, they were different to some of my friends’ very young parents – but I loved it. They had time, they knew themselves and what they were doing, and my dad did not want me to play football but perhaps instead to hang out in the garden – it’s why I am a snob about plastic topiary. Yes, I had many fewer years with them than my sisters had but every one was treasured. I am very happy that contraception was clearly very unreliable back then.
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The return to calmer times means that we now have guests back in the radio studios and that people are happy to meet for interviews again. This week for a forthcoming episode of The Urbanist, we walked the Low Line just south of the Thames. It’s not a linear park, so forget the High Line. It’s more an attempt to create a path alongside the rail track and see empty arches turned into theatres, homes for fledgling businesses, a trapeze school or a green delivery depot. But trees and planting will be used as a tool to create the public realm and to make the disparate feel whole. Real trees too.
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And don’t forget to come and see our verdant home at Midori House. We have a ticketed event to mark the launch of The Monocle Book of Homes. Nolan, its editor, will be there. Me too. Come and join us, it will be a ball. Not a topiary ball, a real one.