An auricula theatre

In horticultural lore, auriculas have always been associated with Spitalfields and writer Patricia Cleveland-Peck has a mission to bring them back again. She believes that the Huguenots brought them here more than three centuries ago, perhaps snatching a twist of seeds as they fled their homeland and then cultivating them in the enclosed gardens of the merchants’ grand houses, and in the weavers’ yards and allotments, thus initiating a passionate culture of domestic horticulture among the working people of the East End which endures to this day.

You only have to cast your eyes upon the wonder of an auricula theatre filled with specimens in bloom – as I did in Patricia’s Sussex garden last week – to understand why these most artificial of flowers can hold you in thrall with the infinite variety of their colour and form. “They are much more like pets than plants,” Patricia admitted to me as we stood in her greenhouse surrounded by seedlings,“because you have to look after them daily, feed them twice a week in the growing season, remove offshoots and repot them once a year. Yet they’re not hard to grow and it’s very relaxing, the perfect antidote to writing, because when you are stuck for an idea you can always tend your auriculas.” Patricia taught herself old French and Latin to research the history of the auricula, but the summit of her investigation was when she reached the top of the Kitzbüheler Horn, high in the Austrian Alps where the ancestor plants of the cultivated varieties are to be found.

Auriculas were first recorded in England in the Elizabethan period as a passtime of the elite but it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that they became a widespread passion amongst horticulturalists of all classes. In 1795, John Thelwall, son of a Spitalfields silk mercer wrote, “I remember the time myself when a man who was a tolerable workman in the fields had generally beside the apartment in which he carried on his vocation, a small summer house and a narrow slip of a garden at the outskirts of the town where he spent his Monday either in flying his pigeons or raising his tulips.” Auriculas were included alongside tulips among those prized species known as the “Floristry Flowers,” plants renowned for their status, which were grown for competition by flower fanciers at “Florists’ Feasts,” the precursors of the modern flower show. These events were recorded as taking place in Spitalfields with prizes such as a copper kettle or a ladle and, after the day’s judging, the plants were all placed upon a long table where the contests sat to enjoy a meal together known as “a shilling ordinary.”

In the nineteenth century, Henry Mayhew wrote of the weavers of Spitalfields that “their love of flowers to this day is a strongly marked characteristic of the class.” and, in 1840, Edward Church who lived in Spital Sq recorded that “the weavers were almost the only botanists of their day in the metropolis.” It was this enthusiasm that maintained a regular flower market in Bethnal Green which eventually segued into the Columbia Rd Flower Market of our day.

Known variously in the past as ricklers, painted ladies and bears’ ears, auriculas come in different classes, show auriculas, alpines, doubles, stripes and borders – each class containing a vast diversity of variants. Beyond their aesthetic appeal, Patricia is interested in the political, religious, cultural and economic history of the auricula, but the best starting point to commence your relationship with this fascinating plant is to feast your eyes upon the dizzying collective spectacle of star performers gathered in an auricula theatre. As Sacheverell Sitwell once wrote, “The perfection of a stage auricula is that of the most exquisite Meissen porcelain or of the most lovely silk stuffs of Isfahan and yet it is a living growing thing.”

Mrs Cairns Old Blue – a border auricula

Glenelg – a show-fancy green-edged auricula

Piers Telford – a gold-centred alpine auricula

Taffetta – a show-self auricula

Seen a Ghost – a show-striped auricula

Sirius – gold-centred alpine auricula

Coventry St – a show-self auricula

M. L. King – show-self auricula

Mrs Herne – gold-centred alpine auricula

Dales Red – border auricula

Pink Gem – double auricula

Summer Wine – gold-centred alpine auricula

McWatt’s Blue – border auricula

Rajah – show-fancy auricula

Cornmeal – show-green-edged auricula

Fanny Meerbeek – show-fancy auricula

Piglet – double auricula

Basuto – gold-centred alpine auricula

Blue Velvet – border auricula

Patricia Cleveland-Peck in her greenhouse.

Next year, I hope to arrange to bring Patricia Cleveland-Peck’s auricula theatre to display in Spitalfields and invite you all to see it, but in the meantime I recommend her magnificent and authoritative work  Auriculas Through the Ages, available here

You may also like to take a look at

My Auriculas from Columbia Rd Market

Thomas Fairchild, Gardener of Hoxton

With a few bluebells in flower in my garden in Spitalfields, I was inspired make a visit to Bow Cemetery and view the display of bluebells sprouting under the tall forest canopy that has grown over the graves of the numberless East Enders buried there. In each season of the the year, this hallowed ground offers me an arcadian refuge from the city streets and my spirits always lift as I pass between the ancient brick walls that enclose it, setting out to lose myself among the winding paths, lined by tombstones and overarched with trees.

Equivocal weather rendered the timing of my trip as a gamble, and I was at the mercy of chance whether I should get there and back in sunshine. Yet I tried to hedge my bets by setting out after a shower and walking quickly down the Whitechapel Rd beneath a blue sky of small fast-moving clouds – though, even as I reached Mile End, a dark thunderhead came eastwards from the City casting gloom upon the land. It was too late to retrace my steps and instead I unfurled my umbrella in the cemetery as the first raindrops fell, taking shelter under a horse chestnut, newly in leaf, as the shower became a downpour.

Standing beneath the dripping tree in the half-light of the storm, I took a survey of the wildflowers around me, primroses spangling the green, the white star-like stitchwort adorning graves, a scattering of palest pink ladies smock highlighting the ground cover, yellow celandines sharp and bright against the dark green leaves, violets and wild strawberries nestling close to the earth and may blossom and cherry blossom up above – and, of course, the bluebells’ hazy azure mist shimmering between the lines of stones tilting at irregular angles. Alone beneath the umbrella under the tree in the heart of the vast graveyard, I waited. It was the place of death, but all around me there was new growth.

Once the rain relented sufficiently for me to leave my shelter, I turned towards the entrance in acceptance that my visit was curtailed. The pungent aroma of wild garlic filled the damp air. But then – demonstrating the quick-changing weather that is characteristic of April – the clouds were gone and dazzling sunshine descended in shafts through the forest canopy turning the wet leaves into a million tiny mirrors, reflecting light in a vision of phantasmagoric luminosity. Each fresh leaf and petal and branch glowed with intense colour after the rain. I stood still and cast my eyes around to absorb every detail in this sacred place. It was a moment of recognition that has recurred throughout my life, the awe-inspiring rush of growth of plant life in England in spring.

You may also like to read about

At Bow Cemetery

Snowfall at Bow Cemetery

Spring Bulbs at Bow Cemetery

Find out more at www.towerhamletscemetery.org

Sarah Edwards, Vera Hullyer & Maureen Gilbert, the flower ladies of St Dunstans

Last year, when Vera Hullyer told me about the Easter display which is the climax of the year in floral arrangement at St Dunstans, Stepney, I knew I had to return and see it for myself. And, arriving in the octagonal parish room at the rear of the church on Maundy Thursday, I discovered Vera and her long-time collaborators, Sarah Edwards and Maureen Gilbert, surrounded by fresh cut flowers and greenery, rather in the manner of those three nymphs frolicking in Botticelli’s painting of the harbingers of Spring.

“I used to help Joyce Graham, until she got too old to do it, and then it was handed over to me,” admitted with Vera with a self-deprecatory laugh and wielding a sprig of Hornbeam freshly picked in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park that morning, confessing, “I’ve been doing it at least twenty years.” Although Vera, Sarah and Maureen do Christmas decorations and regular displays every Friday in the church for forty weeks of the year, they were in agreement that Easter was “the big thing,” and a sense of excitement pervaded.

Reflecting the season, the colours were green and white with highlights of pale yellow, with cut flowers supplied by Joanne the florist of the Roman Rd and greenery from the gardens ands parks of the East End. “The lilies are donated in memory of people and the list of names is placed on the altar.” explained Vera, to underline the gravity of the conception and lifting yet another vase to carry through to add to the epic display at the Altar of Repose in the south aisle. As we stood in front of the magnificent array of flowers, the vividness of their living quality emphasised by the ancient stonework of the church, Vera explained the iconography of her display which represents the Garden of Gethsemane and is complemented by candles, lit to burn through the night watch by parishioners until Good Friday, when the flowers are removed from the church to be brought back on Easter Day as a representation of the Garden of Remembrance.

Begun by St Dunstan himself in 952, St Dunstans is the second oldest building in Tower Hamlets after the Tower of London and was once the parish church for entire borough, standing today both as a reminder of the East End’s distant rural past and of its relationship with the sea – as the mariners’ church, it still flies the red ensign today. Whilst I had been admiring the ladies’ handiwork. the dignified churchwarden Julian Cass hovered in the background and he took this moment, while the floral display received its finishing touches, to suggest I might like to accompany him up the tower.

Through an ancient lancet wooden door and up a narrowing stone staircase, we climbed. First, we came to the loft looking down onto the nave where the nineteenth century nativity figures spend the year, awaiting the next advent. Then we entered the cosy den that is the ringers’ room where Julian and his colleagues convene each Thursday for bell practice. Here were the painted boards recording peals of old. Here was a working model of a bell in its frame made by an apprentice at the bell foundry. Here were portraits of nineteenth century bell ringers. Here was a sign that read, “Do not swing the bells until the clock hammers been barred off and chiming mechanism released.”

Above, we entered a dusty chamber with an ancient lapboarded shed which contained the clock of 1805, now powered by electricity. As a reminder of when it was wound weekly, another arcane sign remains here, “Albert? Make sure you take the winding handle off the clock before leaving.” On the top floor, Julian and I clambered like spiders within the metal web of the bell frame where the legendary bells of Stepney hang, – cast in Whitechapel in the era of the Napoleonic Wars – before we emerged onto the tower roof, with views through the haze across the expanse of the East End to Canary Wharf in one direction and the City in the other, where once there was just fields.

For over a thousand years, Easter has been celebrated here at this modestly proportioned old stone church, and when I returned  around midnight, I found it in darkness, save the candles illuminating the display at the Altar of Repose with a pale glow, in contrast to the rays of the full moon casting the nave in a cool blue light. Spring flowers glowed by candlelight that burned through the small hours while parishioners undertook their silent watch and the dawn rose over the East End on another Easter, welcoming the change of season after the long winter.

These nineteenth century nativity figures are stored away in the loft until next Christmas.

Julian Cass, church warden, in the ringers’ chamber in the tower.

The clock cupboard in the tower.

The church clock was made in Clerkenwell in 1805.

This graffiti on the door of the clock cupboard was written so long ago that no-one knows who Albert and Lawrie were.

The famous bells of Stepney were cast in Whitechapel during the era of the Napoleonic wars.

Looking towards Canary Wharf from the tower.

The finished display, with lilies paid for by parishioners in memory of their loved ones.

During the night’s vigil from Maundy Thursday to Good Friday.

Paschal candle ring by Maureen Gilbert.

Vera Hullyer

Full moon over St Dunstans on Maundy Thursday.

You may also like to read about

Vera Hullyer, Parishioner of St Dunstans

At the National Association of Flower Arranging Societies

Garden scene with photographer’s cloth backdrop c.1900

These beautiful photographs are all that exist to speak of the life of Charles Jones. Very little is known of the events and tenor of his existence, and even the survival of these pictures was left to chance, but now they ensure him posthumous status as one of the great plant photographers. When he died in Lincolnshire in 1959, aged 92, without claiming his pension for many years and in a house without running water or electricity, almost no-one was aware that he was a photographer. And he would be completely forgotten now, if not for the fortuitous discovery made twenty-two years later at Bermondsey Market, of a box of hundreds of his golden-toned gelatin silver prints made from glass plate negatives.

Born in 1866 in Wolverhampton, Jones was an exceptionally gifted professional gardener who worked upon several private estates, most notably Ote Hall near Burgess Hill in Sussex, where his talent received the attention of The Gardener’s Chronicle of 20th September 1905.

“The present gardener, Charles Jones, has had a large share in the modelling of the gardens as they now appear, for on all sides can be seen evidence of his work in the making of flowerbeds and borders and in the planting of fruit trees. Mr Jones is quite an enthusiastic fruit grower and his delight in his well-trained trees was readily apparent…. The lack of extensive glasshouses is no deterrent to Mr Jones in producing supplies of choice fruit and flowers… By the help of wind screens, he has converted warm nooks into suitable places for the growing of tender subjects and with the aid of a few unheated frames produces a goodly supply. Thus is the resourcefulness of the ingenious gardener who has not an unlimited supply of the best appurtenances seen.”

The mystery is how Jones produced such a huge body of photography and developed his distinctive aesthetic in complete isolation. The quality of the prints and notation suggests that he regarded himself as a serious photographer although there is no evidence that he ever published or exhibited his work. A sole advert in Popular Gardening exists offering to photograph people’s gardens for half a crown, suggesting wider ambitions, yet whether anyone took him up on the offer we do not know. Jones’ grandchildren recall that, in old age, he used his own glass plates as cloches to protect his seedlings against frost – which may explain why no negatives have survived.

There is a spare quality and an uncluttered aesthetic in Jones’ images that permits them to appear contemporary a hundred years after they were taken, while the intense focus upon the minutiae of these specimens reveals both Jones’ close knowledge of his own produce and his pride as a gardener in recording his creations. Charles Jones’ sensibility, delighting in the bounty of nature and the beauty of plant forms, and fascinated with variance in growth, is one that any gardener or cook will appreciate.

Swede Green Top

Bean Runner

Stokesia Cyanea

Turnip Green Globe

Bean Longpod

Potato Midlothian Early

Pea Rival

Onion Brown Globe

Cucumber Ridge

Mangold Yellow Globe

Bean (Dwarf) Ne Plus Ultra

Mangold Red Tankard

Seedpods on the head of a Standard Rose

Ornamental Gourd

Bean Runner

Apple Gateshead Codlin

Captain Hayward

Larry’s Perfection

Pear Beurré Diel

Melon Sutton’s Superlative

Mangold Green Top

Charles Harry Jones (1866-1959) c. 1904

The Plant Kingdom of Charles Jones by Sean Sexton & Robert Flynn Johnson available here

You might also like to read about

The Secret Gardens of Spitalfields

Cable St Gardeners

Thomas Fairchild, Gardener of Hoxton

Buying Vegetables for Leila’s Shop

Heather Stevens, Head Gardener at the Gefrrye Museum

At St Mary’s Secret Garden

This is Joanne Ross – fearless florist of the Roman Rd – her grey eyes sparkling as she summons her courage and steels herself to face the annual onslaught of Valentine’s Day tomorrow. “We’re talking about men, here,” she whispered to me, raising her eyebrows significantly, “We’re talking random, last minute…” Yet Joanne was not commenting upon the vagaries of the masculine sex when it comes to romance, but about the practicalities of supplying bouquets to the Romeos of the Roman Rd.

On Valentine’s Day, many contemplate their chances of getting flowers, assessing the likelihood in terms of the state of their relationship or – fatally – even as a barometer of their personal attractiveness, but Joanne knows better. “I’ve got to lay out a lot of money and it’s a big gamble.” she explained plainly, “But you don’t know if it’s going to go or not. Weather plays a big part, windy or sunny makes a difference. And what day of the week it falls isimportant, a weekday is always better.”

If all the factors are in place, Joanne will expect have a queue of up to twenty outside her shop in Globe Town Market Sq on Valentine’s Day, and you can assured she will be working assiduously at her bench to send the gallants away with ravishing examples of her famous hand-tied bouquets to impress their beaus.

As you will have gathered – in spite of superficial appearances – the work of a florist is far from romantic. In Joanne’s tiny shop, she maintains both a wide stock of cut flowers and an equally impressive display of plants in pots outside on the pavement, and for her business to succeed she needs to ensure a quick turnover. Consequently, it is work that requires a keen knowledge of the market and phenomenal organisation to avoid wastage, but after nearly thirty years in business, Joanne has demonstrated staying power.

“I’ve worked in Globe Town Market Sq since I was thirteen. At first, I was my step-grandad’s Saturday girl on the fruit & vegetable stall outside. By the time I was fifteen, my dad had taken over the stall and he set me up with a little flower stall next to his. He made me do it, but it was pitiful – it was pathetic. I used to have an Oxo tin and sometimes I only turned over ten pounds. Then this shop became empty and I borrowed five hundred pounds off the bank when I was eighteen to set up here. It was a lot of money then, when I was only getting fifteen pounds a week. My dad got me started, he saw the potential and he worked quite hard to push me do it, and he was right.

When I first started here, I used to work eight until two and then go to Upton Park to our family florist, Maggie Lenny, and she taught me floristry. She was big lady and she used to butter the bread on the bench right where the moss was! She set me on the right track. And when I got my shop, I bought her an apple blossom tree and she planted it right opposite her shop where she could see it. And it’s still there, although she has gone now. She was very bad with diabetes, so I had to clean the shop and change the water in the vases, and she’d tell me what to do.  She inspired me. She showed me how to wire a flower and how to moss a wreath. Years ago, we used to moss everything. She showed me the traditional way and I’ve always stuck with what she taught me. The first funeral order I had, I wasn’t confident but she made me prepare the wreathes and moss them up, and dad took them all over to her. I had greened the wreathes back to front, but she helped me unpick them and put it right.

Even as a kid, I used to love floristry. I saved up all my money to get my mother’s day flowers. Our family got all our wedding and funeral flowers from Mrs Lenny, she was a wonderful woman and a very wealthy one too, but I don’t think you can get rich from floristry any more. It’s a hard life, the hours are long and you work in the cold. Everything has to be maintained and kept fresh. I go the market daily, my day starts at half past four and some days if we’re busy I don’t get home ’til eight or nine. You forget about your life, I’ve given up everything to make this successful – happily, because it has worked. Eighty per cent of the people that come in here, I know them by their first name. There’s a lot of families, I’ve done all their weddings and funerals. You’ve got to do it with kindness and respect, and do it properly – it’s got to be done right.”

Joanne’s father, Colin Ross, rose to prominence as a union leader fighting for the rights of his fellow dockworkers prior to the closure of the London Docks. In 1980, he came with his wife Patricia to Globe Town. They took over a fruit & vegetable stall from Robert Wheeler who had in turn inherited it from his parents who traded here prior to World War II when this was known as Green St, before the Market Sq was built. Colin sold vegetables, Patricia sold fruit and Joanne sold flowers. After his experience of the labour market, Colin wanted his daughter to have self-reliant employment and today, seven years after Colin & Patricia gave up their stall, Joanne continues in her flower shop.

So Joanne is braced, ready to supply the flowers for her thirtieth Valentine’s Day  in Globe Town Market Sq tomorrow, delighting to play her part because she already knows that some of these customers will return to order wedding flowers, as the sequence of life rolls resolutely onward in the Roman Rd.

Joanne’s mother Patricia Ross at her fruit stall in Globe Town Market in 1980.

Joanne’s dad Colin Ross, a former hero of the London Docks, at his vegetable stall.

Joanne give her mother a peck on the cheek.

Joanne Ross

Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman

Joanne’s Florist, 122 Roman Rd, London, E2 0RN  020 8981 8420

“No enemy but winter and rough weather…”

Every year at this time – the low ebb of the seasons – I go to Columbia Rd to buy potted bulbs and winter-flowering plants which I replant into my collection of old pots from the market and arrange upon the oak dresser, to observe their growth at close quarters and thereby gain solace and inspiration until my garden shows convincing signs of new life.

Each morning, I drag myself from bed – still coughing and wheezing from winter chills – and stumble to the dresser in my pyjamas like one in a holy order paying due reverence to an altar. When the grey gloom of morning feels unremitting, the musky scent of hyacinth or the delicate fragrance of the cyclamen is a tonic to my system, tangible evidence that the season of green leaves and abundant flowers will return. When plant life is scarce, my flowers in pots that I bought for just a few pounds each at Columbia Rd acquire a magical allure for me, an enchanted quality confirmed by the speed of their growth in the warmth of the house, and I delight to have this collection of diverse varieties in dishes to wonder at, as if each one were a unique specimen from an exotic land.

And once they have flowered, I place these plants in a cold corner of the house until I can replant them in the garden. As a consequence, my clumps of Hellebores and Snowdrops are expanding every year and thus I get to enjoy my plants at least twice over – at first on the dresser and in subsequent years growing in my garden.

Staffordshire figure of Orlando from “As You Like It.”

Bill Wren – I was born in Wapping and I moved to Shadwell nine years ago. I’ve had the plot for about fifteen years. We never had a garden when I was young. The nearest I came to gardening was picking hops in Kent. Later I had a friend in Burgess Hill and I used to grow things in her garden. That’s where the greenhouse came from, I put it on the roof of the car and brought it up from Sussex. I’ve built a shed here and a pond. There are plenty of frogs and newts, and I’ve planted a bank next to the road. It’s a wildlife haven now.

Jane Sill - I was born in Liverpool. My grandfather had an allotment in County Durham and my father was a very good gardener. I helped with weeding and cultivated sunflowers. I was living in Cable Street in the late seventies in a top floor flat with no balcony. One day I went to a community festival and Friends of the Earth were offering plots here. I was given one in 1980 and I knew straight away how important it was to establish ourselves as an organisation. We’ve had a two year waiting list since 1981. At one time I was working in a Job Centre and people used to come in and put their names down for a plot.

Mohammed Rahmat Ali Pathni – I have always been a gardener. I started on my father’s land in Bangladesh and when I came to live in Birmingham in 1978 I had a garden behind the back yard. I have lived in Wapping since 1983 and started gardening in Cable Street ten years ago. I’m enjoying myself and it helps my frozen shoulder. I taught my children to garden and my wife often works here too. Many gardeners provide food for other people and I regularly give vegetables to friends. I also write poetry which is printed in the Eurobangla News Weekly, and I am a member of a writers’ group.

Alison Cochran – I moved to Shadwell five years ago because of the allotments and I live just across the road. I noticed them when I was living in Bethnal Green. I was born in Salisbury on a hill fort. I was keen on gardening when I was a child but when I came here I hadn’t gardened for years. I knew I wanted lots of flowers, but now I also grow salad vegetables and leeks, tomatoes, carrots and radishes. The soil is wonderful, everything seems to thrive here. I’ve used Victorian bricks for the paths because I wanted my plot to be in keeping with nearby housing.

Monir Uddin – I’ve lived in the borough for twenty years and I’ve gardened here for eight or nine years. The plot was completely wild at first. I had to uproot everything and it took about two years to get the soil right. I used to grow about sixty different plants and vegetables, including huge pumpkins. I love experimenting with plants and growing them for their medicinal properties. I’m a photographer and I also wanted to produce plants to photograph. I’ve done many different types of work including weddings and portraits. I was involved in the Bollywood film industry, I’ve photographed celebrities and at one time I had a restaurant.

Agatha Athanaze – I’ve been gardening here for twelve years. I was born in Dominica and came to Tower Hamlets in 1961. I’ve done different jobs. I’ve been a machinist and a cleaner. I live in Wapping now. I had a garden in Dominica so I did have some experience. The vegetables came first – I grow cabbages, onions, spring onions, runner beans, carrots, tomatoes, rhubarb and kidney beans. I like flowers too. I’ve ordered roses from Holland and from Spalding. I just like to come here and grow things. There are two benches but I haven’t time to sit down.

John Kelly – I was born in Cork City and I wasn’t a gardener. I came to this country in 1943 to work in the construction industry and started gardening as a hobby and to feed the family. I’ve had the plot here for seventeen years. I didn’t know much but I picked it up as I went along. I’ve always grown vegetables, never flowers. I can’t spend too much time here because I have to look after my wife and I have health problems too. I hate the sight of weeds but I don’t throw them out. I leave them on the ground to let them rot and they form green manure.

Manda Helal - I’m from Hertfordshire and I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twenty-six years. I’ve always been keen on gardening. We had a big garden when I was a child and I was given a section of my own. I’ve had my plot here for three years. My flat in Whitechapel is small and dark, so it’s wonderful to come here. The wheels are a frame for pumpkins. Squashes and pumpkins are so versatile. I grow artichokes and rocket, garlic, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach and climbing purple beans. I’ve taught pottery in the borough for years and more recently I became a compost educator for the Women’s Environmental Network.

John Stokes – I’ve been gardening at Cable Street since I retired six years ago. I asked one of the nuns in the convent across the road and she said the allotments were for local people. I had no experience but I was brought up on a farm and I found I had an instinct for gardening. I came over from Ireland fifty years ago. I worked for London Transport for thirty-six years and missed only nine days. Now I’m at the gardens almost every day in summer and twice a week in winter. I grow vegetables for myself and my cousin and an aunt.

Anna Gaudion – I was born in Guernsey. I’ve lived in Stepney for the last ten years and I work as a midwife in Peckham. I was brought up in the country and I love being outside, hearing birds and growing things. I like allotments too, even just seeing them from trains. I’ve had this plot for three years now. My shed is made from a packing case used to take an object abroad from the British Museum where I was a curator. I enjoy cultivating flowers so I planted a nature garden. I share my plot with Claire who grows vegetables. Mine is the higgledy-piggledy part.

Andy Pickin - I grew up in Finchley and we moved to Shadwell twenty years ago. We spent eight years in Huntingdon when the firm moved there but most of us came back to London. I wanted an allotment because I’d always had great fun sharing one with my dad. I’ve had the plot for fourteen years. I grew vegetables because money was tight and the first year’s crop was fantastic. Our thirteen children all liked coming here when they were young. The older ones grow their own vegetables now. My wife likes the gardens too, she knows I sometimes come here to get away from the telly or the kids arguing.

Robin & Maria Albert - Robin was in catering before becoming a gardener eight years ago. He was born in Mile End and he’s lived in London all his life. I was born in London too and brought up in Margate. My family is always trying to persuade us to move out to Kent but we like living in Bethnal Green. We grow flowers at home but we wanted somewhere separate for vegetables. The fact that everything is organic is part of the appeal. Producing your own pure food is very satisfying. We have some flowers too and a pond that attracts frogs. I can’t do so much now but I still find gardening very therapeutic.

Ray Newton - I’ve always grown things. I share this plot with Agatha. We grow about a dozen different types of vegetables. It’s all organic. We don’t use pesticides. I retired last year from teaching business studies at Tower Hamlets College. Before that I worked in industry and at one time I was manager of a betting shop. I studied for O and A levels at evening classes and then took a degree course. I became a teacher and taught for twenty-five years. My other interests are local history and football. I’m the secretary of the History of Wapping Trust and a lifelong Millwall supporter.

Will Daly - I was a founder member of the gardens. I was in a nearby pub when Jane came in with another Irish chap and they persuaded me to have a plot. I’ve been in the borough for twenty-seven years. I was born in Ireland and I made a living salmon fishing on a tributary of the Shannon. I came to this country in 1951 and did building work. One of my brothers came over too but he missed the river and went home after a while. I still go back to Ireland but only for weddings and funerals. I can’t do very much gardening now but I love the peace of it.

Raymond Hussey – This is my second year. I live in one of the flats nearby. I’m growing vegetables and learning as I go along. What I’m most proud of is the brussels. And my runner beans were unbelievable. I don’t know whether it’s the soil or me talking to them. Weeds are a problem. Sometimes I’d like to use gallons of weedkiller but we’re not allowed. So I come in and have a chat. I call them everything but weeds. I was born on one of the estates off Brick Lane. I’ve done lots of things including acting. In my last job I was a dustman but I got trapped by the lorry. I still can’t do heavy work so the plot’s a bit of a mess but it’s my little world and I love it.

Robin, Yvonne and Katie Guess - We live at the other end of Cable Street. There’s a small courtyard garden but Yvonne and I were used to growing fruit and vegetables before we lived in London. We love soft fruit, we had a huge crop last year. We grow several vegetables and Yvonne has planted a mixed flower and herb bed. Our daughter Katie likes planting and picking but not weeding. We’re both from the south-east. I’ve been in the East End since 1968 and I worked on the Isle of Dogs as a quality control chemist. Now I’m with the Music Alliance in Oxford Street dealing with composer copyright.

Carl Vella – I came to Tower Hamlets from Malta in 1950 and worked for the NHS, mostly as a fitter and stoker. I’m retired and since I took over the plot four years ago I like to come here every day. I grow mostly vegetables –  potatoes and cabbages. I’m on my own now so I give a lot of produce away to an elderly neighbour. I live in the flats nearby and there’s no garden. Coming here stops me getting fed up. I take my dog for a walk, go to the bookie’s and come here. I’d like to bring Pedro more often but he won’t stay in one place.

Sister Elizabeth O’Connor - Our Order has been part of the local community since 1859 and I came to the convent in 1949. After the houses here were demolished the site became a dumping ground until Friends of the Earth initiated the gardens project. When I retired from teaching in 1991, I started gardening here. All the sisters appreciate home grown vegetables and having fresh flowers for the chapel. As a child in County Clare I enjoyed helping my father in our kitchen garden. Apart from the practical use, the gardens are a great place for breaking down barriers and it’s especially good that women can feel safe here on their own.

Graham Kenlin – I was born in Bermuda. My father was a navy chef and had a land-based job working for an admiral. We came back to England when I was four and I grew up in Hackney. I’ve lived in Wapping for thirty-eight years and I’ve had a plot here for about fifteen years. My family have always had allotments. It’s very relaxing but I’m a lazy gardener. I’m an archaeologist and I work abroad sometimes so the plot gets neglected. I’ve had the odd good year but normally I do just enough to stay credible. I like growing large weeds, anything that’s interesting.

Sheila McQuaid - I came across the gardens at an open day. It was such an oasis of green and calm that I put my name down on the spot. Gardening is in the family. My parents were horticulturalists and I grew plants as a child but I’ve only become really interested in the last ten years. We decided on fruit because it’s expensive, especially if you want organic, and it doesn’t need constant attention. I was born and brought up in Cornwall and I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twenty-five years. I’m a housing adviser for Camden Council and I work for Stitches in Time on community textile projects.

Anna Girvan and John Griemsman – We’ve had the plot for about ten years. We’re in a 10th floor flat in Limehouse and we wanted somewhere to spend time outside and to grow vegetables. I’m from Belfast and I’ve lived in Limehouse for twenty-five years. John is from Wisconsin and he’s been here for almost thirty years. I work as a librarian in the West End and John is a special needs assistant. I’m more pleased by the flowers in the end than the vegetables. My favourite is a dahlia that Annemarie gave me. It’s a beautiful purple pink and it flowers for such a long time.

Mary Laurencin – I’ve been gardening here for about ten years. A cousin asked me to help then passed the plot on to me. I’d never gardened before but I was suffering from depression and sometimes it was the only place I felt comfortable. I learned to garden mainly by watching television. I’m from St Lucia and I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for forty years. I came to England in 1962 and at one time I did four jobs every day – I worked in a cafe, had a job at Sainsbury’s, I was a machinist and I did some cleaning. I grow vegetables here. I love flowers but you can’t eat flowers.

Conrad, Donald and James Korek – I garden here with my wife Catherine and our two younger sons, Donald, ten, and James, six. Our eldest boy isn’t interested now. We’ve lived in the borough for fourteen years and started gardening at Cable Street about a year after we arrived. We have a flat nearby and we like to spend time outdoors. I was born in North London and Catherine was brought up on a farm in Scotland, so she has more experience of growing food. James likes weeding and he supports Arsenal. Donald is a West Ham supporter and he’s good at picking up stones and chatting to the other gardeners.

Annemarie Cooper - I’m a supply teacher and I write poetry. I’ve had a plot since 1986. I didn’t know anything about gardening but I love nature and being close to the earth. My dad was a very good vegetable gardener. He and my grandfather shared a plot and they were always arguing about it. I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twenty years. When I started here I thought I wanted to grow flowers then I got into vegetables. I love growing sweet peas and big flashy dahlias. Really I like anything that deigns to grow. I enjoy growing tomatoes and digging up potatoes.

Emir Hasham - I’m on the waiting list and until I have a plot I’ll be working on the communal area. My work is computer based graphics and special effects for television and what I like about gardening is the real honest labour and getting my hands dirty. It will be great to grow my own fruit and vegetables My parents used to garden and I helped as a child. I was born in Sheffield. My mum is a Yorkshire lass and my dad is mainly Asian. I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twelve years now. I haven’t a garden at home and there’s only so much you can grow on a balcony.

Anwara Begum - I was born in Bangladesh. My father was a businessman and had some land. My seven sisters and I helped mother with the farming. We never had to buy food from the market and we sold bamboo and bananas. When I was sixteen I came to live in Tower Hamlets and ten years ago I started gardening at Cable Street. The four children helped when they were younger but now they are busy with other things. They have to study and help with the housework. I’m studying too – IT, Childcare, Maths and English. And I’m taking Bengali GCSE as well as doing voluntary work in a nursery school.

Joseph Micallef - I first came to the borough from Malta in 1955 and settled here permanently in 1961. I’ve had the plot for ten years. I didn’t know anything about gardening but my father had a farm in Malta so I knew something about agriculture. The vegetables came first and my wife likes the flowers, but I just enjoy seeing things grow and passing the time here. A lot of the produce is given away. You do tend to get too much at once. People look at the plot and think I’m an expert but I’m not, I just plant things and they grow.

Photographs copyright © Chris Kelly

To learn more about Cable Street Community Gardens or buy copies of the Cable St Gardeners book, contact Jane Sill (janesill@aol.com) or visit www.cablestreetcommunitygardens.co.uk

You may also like to take a look at Chris Kelly’s Columbia School Portraits 1996

Wendy Davis, National Chairman of NAFAS

One Christmas, my presents arrived wrapped in red foil and garnished with artfully contrived arrangements of pine cones, lichen-encrusted branches and holly leaves sprayed gold. I knew something was up – my mother had joined a flower arrangment society. The truth is that I come from a passionate family of flower arrangers. My grandmother used to stand beech leaves in jars of obscure chemicals and then flatten them under the carpet for months in preparation for Christmas when she would fix them in oasis with honesty pods and plastic hellebores. Famously, for an exceptionally ambitious display, she once grew gladioli and set them at angles using a protractor, to create the effect of the sun rising.

So you can imagine my excitement when I was invited to tea with Wendy Davis, Chairman of the National Association of Flower Arrangment Societies, at the magnificent eighteenth century headquarters in Devonshire Sq where the activities of their seventy-two thousand members are co-ordinated. Wendy was flushed with pride from a recent triumph at Westminster Abbey, where she had organised the display for the four hundredth anniversary of the King James Bible. Twenty-one years ago, a close friend took Wendy along to a flower arranging class in Llangollen, North Wales and she has never looked back since, yet she still carries an awareness of the essentially modest nature of her chosen art.

Wendy is inspired by Julia Clements, the third president after Constance Spry and Mary Pope, the pioneering founder of the Association in 1959. A legend among flower arrangers and author of dozens of classic books on the subject, Julia Clements died in November after celebrating her one hundred and fourth birthday this year. “A week before she died, we were doing flower arranging together,” Wendy confided to me, as we sipped tea from floral cups in the quiet of her panelled office. “She started flower arranging classes after the war to give people something to do that wouldn’t cost money,” explained Wendy, lapsing into respectful silence and taking another sip of her tea.

Leading me up the fine old staircase, winding through the centre of the house, Wendy showed me the expansive reception rooms with cases storing all manner of flower-arranging trophies and the grand conference room where representatives from the twenty-one regions convene. On the top floor, modestly appointed shared bedrooms provide accommodation for members from out of London whilst visiting on Association business. Staffed by a core of five paid staff and a great many voluntary helpers, the prevailing atmosphere at NAFAS is of civility and respect.

Wendy taught me how to spot the ubiquitous NAFAS triangle, the ideal compositional form for a floral arrangement, permitting the most elegant use of flowers and foliage. It need hardly be said that there is an elaborate culture at NAFAS with a refined aesthetic code of its own, maintained through demonstrators that teach the visual vocabulary and judges who qualify to  make assessments in the all-important competitions. Make no mistake, flower arranging is a highly competitive global arena these days with NAFAS sending contestants to Boston for the world championships and acting as consultant to Indian universities upon the creation of flower arranging qualifications.

Wendy prefers to speak of the personal meaning that is incarnate when flowers are used to express emotion. “When I’ve done funeral flowers for members of my family and friends, it’s how I say goodbye to them,” she confessed, turning thoughtful as we descended the stairs again. Certainly, I associate flower arranging with churches and the innate poetry that exists in such ephemeral displays set against unremitting stone. Wendy related the story of an eleven-year-old boy who won a trophy in a NAFAS scheme to encourage flower arranging among the young.  He could not collect the award because his father died, but he made a floral arrangement in memory of his father. “Some people said it was morbid, but I said, ‘no, creating this is part of the healing process.’” Wendy informed me with a tender smile.

I cannot deny that flower arrangements strike an emotional chord for me too. I can never walk past, I must always stop and pay due reverence to any floral composition – contemplating the thought and care expended in its creation. And flowers from the garden displayed in old china have been a fond motif throughout my life. In fact, I do not remember those Christmas presents which came adorned so beautifully with pine cones and holly, I only remember the decoration.

The flower arrangers might seem strangely placed here at the edge of the City surrounded by financial industries – yet the truth is they are a gentle civilising influence upon their neighbours, preaching their NAFAS message of “Friendship through flowers.”

National Association of Flower Arranging Societies headquarters in Devonshire Square.

First president of NAFAS, Mary Pope – a pioneer in the flower arrangement movement.

The Lady Mayoress of Plymouth admires a flower arrangement at Saltram House, 1963.

At the Buxton Festival, Mrs Russell Ritchie Innis presents the Paul Revere silver bowl to Mary Pope as a gift from the National Association of Garden Clubs of USA, 1964.

Admiring a table decoration in scarlet and green at Taunton’s Christmas exhibition, 1963.

Tom Hill, winner of the  trophy for the best arrangement at the Mercia & North Wales Show, Nantwich.

Mary Pope and Margaret Hewitt OBE admire a pedestal arrangement of the Liverpool Flower Arrangement Society staged by Hugh Mather of St Helens.

Mrs E. Allen, National Chairman receives a Sheffield carving set from Mrs B. Denton, Chairman of Sheffield Floral Club.

Veteran flower arranger, Julia Clements, celebrates her hundredth birthday at NAFAS in 2006.

A Christmas kissing bough engraved by Joan Hassall, from an early issue of The Flower Arranger.

Archive images copyright © NAFAS

Carl Grover

The forest has come to Columbia Rd. Even before you arrive you can smell pine, drifting upon the breeze, and once you step onto the cobbles, there are needles underfoot. At either end of this narrow thoroughfare, a forest has grown overnight, filling the street with luxuriant green undergrowth and bringing the atmosphere of mystery and romance to the market which makes this Sunday before Christmas unique. You wonder – as you walk between the crowded, glistening trees –  if you might emerge into a magical landscape, yet – even as this reverie takes you – sonorous voices are heard. “Is this the call of the woodland folk?” you ask.

In fact, it is the magnificent resounding tone of Denise Burridge, the diva blessed with the fullest voice amongst the hardy chorus of traders that compose the clamorous symphony of Columbia Rd Market. This is where your expectations, hopes, wishes and dreams of plants and flowers can be fulfilled, and it is all going for a song.

At the Eastern end of the street, Christmas trees are sold by the Burridges, the family who have been more involved with the history of this market than any other for generations – while, selling trees at the Western end, you will find the Hartnetts who have claim to be the longest standing traders here, for over a century. Yet, at the Western extremity, also keep an eye out for the cheery face of Albert Dean, the fourth Albert Dean in succession in his family to be selling flowers from this pitch – which means that for more than a hundred years you could have here and bought flowers from an Albert Dean on this corner.

As you make your way amongst the throng down the centre of the street, sensations crowd upon you – losing sense of yourself in the horde, the stalls appear to float by like tableaux populated with the extravagantly good-humoured spirits of flowers and herbs, offering their beneficence. (Today, Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Jeremy Freedman has captured these familiar market characters in their wintry guises.)

Advent is a season of ritual and tradition, and the Sunday before Christmas is my favourite time to come to Columbia Rd in anticipation of carrying off a tree, a bough of mistletoe, branches of holly, cut flowers, house plants and pots of bulbs – because, as we reach Midwinter, it tempers my sadness at the tender loss of Summer to fill the house with greenery and assure myself that life sustains itself yet, out there in the silence of the greenwood.

Mick Grover

At A.E. Hartnett & Sons Ltd

Albert Dean

Billy Burridge

Dennis Madden

Denise Burridge and admirer

George Burridge and Luke

Lisa Burridge

Sue, Frankie and Georgia Burridge

Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman

The Yule Log is a large wooden log, burned in the hearth as a part of Yule or Christmas celebrations. Originally an entire tree, it was carefully chosen and brought into the house with great ceremony to provide lasting warmth throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas (from Christmas Eve until Epiphany). In some European traditions, the largest end of the log would be placed in hearth while the rest of the tree stuck out into the room.

Ideally, the log would be lit with a brand made out of  remnant of last year’s log, and it was hoped and considered a sign of great luck, that the log would burn throughout the twelve days. The Yule Log has frequently been associated with germanic paganism, practiced across northern Europe prior to the arrival of Christianity. One of the first to make this connection was the English historian Henry Bourne, writing in the 1720s, who described the practice occurring in the Tyne valley and theorised that it derived from sixth or seventh century Anglo-Saxon pagan customs – in old English folklore, Father Christmas was sometimes portrayed carrying a Yule Log.

The Yule Log brought prosperity and protection from evil, and by keeping the remnant of the log, the protection was believed to last all year. As well as being a protective amulet, the log became a source of rivalry – causing members of a rural communities to compete to possess the largest. According to historian and folklorist Professor Ronald Hutton, the traditions of the Yule Log died out in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century because of “the reduction in farm labour and the disappearance of the old-fashioned open hearths.”

In France and Wallonia, and francophone regions of the world – such as Quebec and in Lebanon – the Bûche de Noël (“Christmas Log”) is a traditional dessert, a cake in the shape of a Yule Log. Usually taking the form of a large cylindrical “roulade,” covered with chocolate icing, incised with a fork to resemble the tree’s bark – one end is lopped off and stood up to indicate the rings of the “log.”

I have shown here a Quebecois lumberjack, Alain Hauteville, sitting on the Yule Log he has just chopped down. The tree he chose was one that a childhood sweet-heart of his had written his initials into the bark many moons ago, before spurning him for a wealthy silk merchant in Montreal. After completing his thirsty work, young Al is enjoying a brew from his Thermos and a smoke,before dragging the lumber back to his cabin at the forest’s edge.

Illustration copyright © Paul Bommer