It is a stifling hot Monday in early December and the garden designer Claire
Whitehouse is sitting on a plastic chair under the shade of a huge neem tree
next to the chief of Djamatil village in central Senegal.
Around her crowd men, women and children from this 400-strong settlement who
have been waiting several hours for her arrival. A translator, Ousmane
Diallo, explains her mission: “Claire and these people from Christian Aid
are helping to organise something called Hampton Court show, which is like a
weekly market, except that this one lasts many days. She wants to know all
about the crops you grow here and the problems you have.” There is clapping
and appreciative nods and then the chief's first wife, Mme Diorthiam, a
small, vivacious grandmother dressed in a crisp lime-green robe and matching
head scarf, leaps up to show Whitehouse the medley of vegetables and fruits
that have been placed in piles on a table: cassava, sweet potatoes,
aubergines, okra, millet, peppers, mooli, cabbages, limes and a pile of
dried red fruits — a crop called bissap that is used to make a
vitamin-packed drink.
Mme Diorthiam leads the English party across the dusty clearing to a
breezeblock building which houses a powerful pump. This, she explains, was
provided for the village by RADI, a pan-African organisation which is one of
Christian Aid’s partners in Senegal, and means that water can be pumped into
their three wells at the push of a button. Then the first lady of the
village scoops up her market-day dress and bends to show Whitehouse how she
hollows out a circle of soil, plants an aubergine, enriches the soil with
animal droppings and then waters it in with a bucketful from the well.
Finally she scatters a handful of weeds on top, to keep in as much moisture
as possible, while lecturing Whitehouse and the bystanders on the importance
of growing crops with manure and not artificial fertilisers, “to give our
children and our husbands healthy food”.
Djamatil’s organic approach is the first of many surprises for Whitehouse, who
is at the start of her field trip for this year’s Christian Aid show garden.
In neighbouring Mali she had seen widespread use of pesticides and
artificial fertilisers. But Djamatil, she realises, is a special case: the
villagers can afford to be more concerned with the quality of their food
since a permanent water source allows them to try a diverse range of crops
that the women have been shown how to grow.
More typical of Senegal, she is told, is the coastal farm of Abdul Aziz, which
we visit the next day. Here we discover 47-year-old Aziz, who receives no
aid, struggling to feed his extended family in the face of drought and
increasing competition from imported foods from Europe — especially onions,
potatoes and tomatoes. He sprinkles artificial fertiliser liberally — to
speed up growth, he explains.
Later, at the market, Whitehouse can find only big fat Dutch onions, which the
people buy in preference to the local red onion because they store better
and are cheaper, and tinned tomatoes from Italy. Both are essential
ingredients in the national dish, thieboudienne. A generous mound of yellow
“bitter aubergines”, shaped like tiny Turks Turban squashes, confirms the
speed with which soft vegetables rot under the Senegal sun if they are
transported in open carts — the stallholders are picking out almost every
second one.
As we move on to another village, I wonder how Whitehouse will weave this
horticultural complexity into a design that tells the Senegal story
accurately, yet with enough panache to draw in the crowds who have come to
see glitzy gardens full of burnished steel and hot plants.
“I love having an important story to tell,” she says. “My priority is to tell
it well, but I am also all the time on the look-out for things that will
bring ‘colour’ to the garden.” There is no shortage of striking examples: by
the end of the second day she has already earmarked and photographed the
woven-brush panels that enclose the village compounds, the Chaumont-esque
“fence” at a Dakar market garden made out of the discarded templates from a
flipflop factory, and brightly striped teapots and buckets used in the
villages. Even at the Abdul Aziz farm, her designer’s eye is engaged by the
grid-like effect of the recently planted tomato field, which looks like a
giant, natural seed tray, each plant framed by a square ridge of soil to
retain moisture.
On the third day the pressure is on to find seeds of the vegetables she wants
to feature in the garden. Scouring the noisy market at the colonial town of
St Louis, she buys bags of millet, haricot beans and cow-peas for a few
francs. Most of the rest she finds at a seed shop, where her dozen or so 25g
packets come to a hefty £46 — Abdul Aziz would have to produce and sell more
than 1,000kg (2,200lb) of potatoes to earn that much.
Later, a visit to Espaces Vertes nursery in the centre of the town is another
surprise — and a welcome one. Standing in a garden that was originally
planted by the great French collector Michel Adanson, Whitehouse finds
coral-pink hibiscus sprawling over the paths, chest high yellow and red
cannas, scarlet Cleondendrum splendens clambering skywards, and many
other tropical plants. Few species are native to Senegal, but they have
settled in over the centuries to adorn city gardens and hotels. These
vibrant plants, along with the bougainvillea and ipomoea that brighten the
towns en route, give her plenty of ideas for the garden’s ornamental
planting.
She returns to England, her notebook full of plants to be identified, her bags
stuffed with wares, and her camera loaded with images to inspire the team of
craftspeople and carpenters who will help her to re-create a corner of
Senegal in Middlesex.
The next stage requires Whitehouse to become a plant hunter. “With most show
gardens,” she says, “you design the garden round the plants you can get.
With a charity garden like this one, it is the other way round. You are
given a story, then you get to see the plants involved, and then you try to
get them.” With great speed she finds her vegetable grower — Simon Frayne,
of Warborne Organics, who will raise most of her crops in his spare time.
Bissap, however, is a problem. Eventually she locates a grower in Texas,
only to hear later that his crop has failed. Back to the drawing board.
Meanwhile, her contractor has found a master thatcher to make the straw hut.
By the end of March Whitehouse has found suppliers for most of the
ornamental plants, and has redrawn her plan to include a selection alongside
“Restaurant Baobab”, which will house the charity’s information area.
The run-up to the show is spent checking on the plants, making sure that the
construction team is on schedule, and sourcing the trees, several of which
she will hire for the show week. By this weekend, with the market stalls on
site and the last of the chillies and aubergines planted, Whitehouse will
have spent more than six months months living and breathing the Christian
Aid garden. Having designed eight show gardens for charities and three
non-charity ones, she knows the appeal of both. “Doing a show garden in
Hampton, you get a bit of deerpark and you are given the chance to transform
it. That’s incredibly exciting. With a charity garden, though, you are also
telling an important story in a way that pleases the show-going public and
the RHS judges. That’s the extra challenge.”
Christian Aid Seeds of Hope garden is at B3 or visit www.christianaid.org.uk/hamptoncourt
Anne Gatti flew to Senegal on TAP Air Portugal, which operates five
flights a week to Dakar. More information on 0845 6010932 or
www.tap-airportugal.co.uk
Christian Aid in Africa
Christian Aid’s Seeds of Hope Garden highlights the challenges facing poor
farmers in West Africa. Senegal has never been a rich country. However, in
the 1970s a combination of drought and external economic factors led to its Government
seeking help from the IMF and World Bank. Loans were approved subject to
compliance with stringent conditions that included cutting public spending,
ending support to farmers (in the forms of subsidised seeds and guaranteed
markets and fair prices for their produce), and opening their markets to
free imports.
Thirty years on, farmers are struggling to feed their families. They have been
abandoned by the Government and become increasingly isolated because of the
country’s deteriorating infrastructure. At the same time they have
experienced an invasion of the domestic market by cheap and subsidised
imports from developed countries. To make matters worse, climate change has
brought less predictable patterns of rainfall or sometimes simply less
rainfall altogether.
Christian Aid is working with partner organisations on the ground to offer
immediate assistance to farmers, such as installing bore holes and water
points to enable crop diversification and encouraging the formation of
co-operatives. But long term, the charity believes that the only way it can
enable the farmers to work their way out of poverty is by tackling the
restrictive trade rules. Through its Trade Justice campaign it is calling on
the British Government to use its power and influence to change the current
rules.
To join the Trade Justice campaign or make a donation to Christian Aid, visit
www.christianaid.org.uk/hamptoncourt or call 0845 3300500
Hampton Court flower show
With more than 700 exhibitors and 50 show gardens this year, the Hampton Court
Palace Flower Show — the world’s largest annual flower show — spreads over
an extra six acres on the north side of the Long Canal. This is a show where
you can buy from the first day, and to make the experience more pleasurable
there are plant porters, a plant crèche(50p a bag) and a free children’s
crèche.
As well as pavilions filled with a wide range of blooms there is a marquee
displaying floral art (July 6-8) and fruit and vegetables (July 10-11). Here
you can get advice on how to grow fruit-bearing trees in pots, such as
apples, pears, plums, apricots and avocados, from Doug Palmer, a retired
commercial manager who has been growing successfully on his allotment, near
Plymouth, for seven years.
Jennifer Trehane, of the Dorset Blueberry Company, will have blueberry plants
and fruit for sale. The Southern High Bush blueberries are ideal for urban
gardens, she says, and varieties such as ‘Sunshine Blue’ offer luscious
fruit as well as stunning foliage and pink flowers.
Hampton Court Show, East Molesey, Surrey. Members only July 6-7 (ticket
hotline 0870 9063790) ; non-members July 8-11 (ticket hotline 0870 9063791).
Online booking and information www.rhs.org.uk/hamptoncourt
Information 020-7649 1885
