Chiswick House and its gardens was a private lunatic asylum from 1892 until 1928. Looking at the entrance at Chiswick I’m reminded of Mr Loveday’s Little Outing by Evelyn Waugh.
“You will not find your father greatly changed,” remarked Lady Moping, as the car turned into the gates of the County Asylum. It’s one of my favourite first lines. But we digress, today’s men in white coats were in Hyde Park and looked as if they had come to decontaminate a nuclear catastrophe.
The area was cordoned off and we were cautioned to stand upwind; how exciting. Now we must digress again and remember how phylloxera devastated European vineyards in the 19th century. American vines experimentally brought to Europe carried the pest. Since then there have been more killers of flora than you could shake a stick at: Dutch Elm, Strip the Willow, Ash fungus, Chestnut die-back, Box Moth and so on.
The men in white coats were out yesterday to destroy oak processionary moth’s (Thaumetopoea processionea) nests. This blasted pest came on the leaves of oak saplings imported from Europe in 2006 and I fear that it will devastate the ancient oak forests around London. They are tackling the problem in Hyde Park but there are too many moth nests to find and destroy more than a few. I fear we will soon start noticing the effect in London and surrounding counties.
Christopher,
Call me vacuous (you have called me worse), but why on earth was the UK importing native species of tree from Europe? It is completely bonkers to source species such as oak from abroad when it can be successfully grown on home soil, to say nothing of the plant miles incurred by road & sea, and thus the further damage to the environment.
In our garden we managed to avoid the tragedy of Dutch Elm, but our buxus has not fared so well and we have huge swathes of dead wood which does not look so appealing.
In my view there should be a total moratorium on imports of species currently suspected to be disease prone in order to prevent further destruction of our woodland, parks & gardens.
Perhaps Boris could implement such a policy, after all they say he has a ‘heart of oak’.
My local nursery explained to me that most slow growing trees sold in UK are imported from places like Lombardy and the Low Country where the top soil can go down as much as 15ft hence the trees develop considerably quicker. The example he give is the ginkgo. If grown in the UK it can take up to 15 years or more to see if you have a male (good) or female (smelly seeds) tree. On the plains of Lombardy this takes less than 5 years.
I totally agree with Hibernophile that there should be a complete ban on all imported plants and insects unless proper quarantine is undertaken. The Aussies get it right.