The former pond in the garden gifted by George Brigstocke.
GARDENINGDON’T we all love a detective story? And here is one just down the road from me that I have, so far, been unable to unravel…
One of my younger daughter, Bella’s, favourite teachers at Bishop Lovett (it will always be that to me), Simon Jarvis, put me on the trail of a fairly rare small tree that was given by Waipawa WI, close to beautiful Hawkes Bay on the North Island of New Zealand.
The tree, plagianthus lyalli — otherwise known as ribbonwood — was given to our own Seaview WI to mark the accession to the throne of George VI on May 12, 1937.
Now, what is the relevance to today?
There are several reasons to know a little more about this planting, carried out in the days of optimism before the outbreak of war.
We all now know from the film The King’s Speech, in fascinating detail, how George VI found himself perched uncomfortably on the throne but what became of the little sapling shipped from the other side of the world to pay tribute to that unexpected king-making?
It would be especially interesting to know, as the country prepares to pay tribute to the reign of one of his daughters, Queen Elizabeth II, for a rule only surpassed in longevity by that of his grandmother, Queen Victoria.
The connection between the Island and Victoria is well known but somewhat less so is the link between WIs 11,400 miles apart.
As the current queen’s diamond jubilee approaches, perhaps those links should be explored because, as a celebratory symbol, trees have always played a large part in anniversary.
In the UK, 60 jubilee woodlands are planned to be established by the Woodland Trust in 2011 to 12 — one of which is to be 500 acres and the rest 60 acres each.
It is the Woodland Trust which recorded the planting of plagianthus lyalli ‘somewhere in Seaview parish’. This was spotted by the teacher-turned-detective, who passed the clue to me.
One thing is for certain, though, the Woodland Trust’s planting will not include specimens of the little tree which flourishes on New Zealand’s South Island to which it is native.
P. lyalli is a member of the mallow family, ‘a free-flowering and beautiful shrub or small tree but one not recommended for general planting in this country’.
At Kew it did well and flowered freely on an east wall. The flowers are snow-white, with golden-yellow anthers, which are produced on the ends of the last season’s branchlets during June and July.
I could, of course, trawl through the yellowed pages of County Press files for P. lyalli, but it would be much more fun to have personal recollections and news of its fate, which would certainly not be recorded — in a similar way to the loss of the community-planted crab apple in Orchard Road, also in Seaview, which has just been cut down to make way for improved visibility and a better pavement.
However, one gift highlighted by Simon, which does remain, is a parcel of land in elegant Brigstocke Terrace given by one of Ryde’s most well-known names .
G.R. (George) Brigstocke gave a small parcel of land to the borough to be laid out as a rest garden.
Simon’s research shows it is still there, a little green gem of a garden where I spent a fair bit of my youth passing by or through. On the corner of Adelaide Place and Ratcliffe Avenue, it was a couple of hundred yards from where my parents first settled on the Island and included a fine, stone-clad ornamental pond which proved too expensive — and dangerous — for the council to maintain and became a flowerbed.