#planthunters

Desktop Boots

January 2020. Started the new year testing Highdown tree trails at a local school, organised by Creative Waves duo Nadia and Vanessa. With 90 kids we discovered they knew a lot about tree structure but not how they were once collected. I went into improv mode and did a role-play using volunteers, the class room and a high table. We pretended the Sterns telephoned their friends the Kingdon-Wards to ask if they could collect a rare tree from the Himalayas. The highlight was to ask the children playing Frank and Jean Kingdon- Ward to climb onto a desk to get a tree cutting. Ok might not be correct, and concerns with safety on a desk, but got their attention!

The role-play was  influenced by reading Jean Kingdom Ward’s My Hill So Strong published in 1952. The Kingdon-Wards were regular visitors to the Sterns, as seen in the Highdown Visitors Book. Frank was first employed by Frederick in 1920s, in a syndicate of wealthy collectors, to collect chalk loving plants in what was Upper Burma. From a 21st century viewpoint the book is paternalistic, especially about some of the Indian porters they employed to get into Tibet. However, have to admire Jean’s courage walking hundreds of miles in extreme mountains, extreme weather, awful blister flies, and surviving an earthquake - just to collect plants with Frank!  Would they be now regarded as eco-pirates? Now and again a detail jumps out in Jean’s book, such as footwear:

Singing Papers

December 2019. Whoa. Pause. Digest. Finally got up to the Kew Gardens archive to discover, with Highdown colleague Annelise, thousands of letters and invoices to Frederick and Sybil Stern and Frederick’s notebooks. It became information overload. Need several visits to get a proper big picture of their life.

Amongst the letters typed, scribbled, punched and stapled to the Sterns I discovered that some of the papers were singing to me. Yes, sounds weird, see blog 7. What I mean is that very strong voices jumped out at me from the letters I read, especially from two regular visitors to Highdown and Sybil:

Plant hunter Frank Kingdon-Ward,  including his wistful description sitting  on top of Highdown Hill at start of WW2.

Plant scientist Janaki Ammal‘s joy in sharing her discoveries with the Sterns of new plant chromosome numbers. And making them a proper curry.

Sybil Stern’s long form essay on observing     Prince Edward’s visit to Highdown in 1933.

UP TO HIGHDOWN

My latest wee job finds me at the ‘hidden’ park that is Highdown Gardens established by Sir Frederick and Lady Sybil Stern from 1909. These gardens sit on part of the West Sussex South Downs overlooking the English Channel, near Worthing.

In my first weeks of research I have stumbled across Anglo-Jewish aristocrats, Planthunters (forget Indiana Jones), amazing female Botanists from India, the British Royal Family and groups of East End kids. All these people visited Highdown from 1920s to 1950s. And then there are the amazing rare plants Sir Frederick grew on chalk soil - claimed to be impossible 100 years ago.