Val Bourne bids fond farewell to Timothy Walker

Oxford is so fortunate to have its own Botanic Garden, close to Magdalen Bridge. It’s a magical place with a very special atmosphere and I always enjoy a visit.

A few nights ago I was able to experience a perfect June evening, when the Friends said an official farewell to Timothy Walker the outgoing director. Timothy has one of the liveliest minds I’ve ever met and I’ve known a few! He isn’t retreating though, he’s going to continue lecturing at the university and speaking to groups. If you haven’t heard him, his lectures are the equivalent of sparkling vintage champagne.

Timothy has unwittingly provided me with several anecdotes over the years, but my favourite concerns the late Primrose Warburg (1920–1996), an eminent Oxfordshire gardener and snowdrop queen. She also happened to be the widow of the legendary botanist, Edmund ‘Heff’ Warburg (1908–1966).

When the young Timothy, who began working at the Botanic Garden in 1986, was summoned to Primrose’s private garden he was understandably nervous. He admired a plant and she duly offered a cutting. Whereupon Timothy innocently enquired “is it the right time to take a cutting?” Primrose replied curtly: “The right time to take a cutting, young man, is when it is offered!” I constantly weave this into my snowdrop lectures and it always gets an enormous laugh. Thank you, Timothy!

The thing about Timothy is he has had the confidence and foresight to move the garden into the modern era, which I sense must be like turning an oil tanker. The same perspicacity has probably led to him to leaving now, in the knowledge that the garden needs new blood if it’s to rise to greater heights in its 400th year in 2021. Getting out at the right time is the greatest skill in life. Make no mistake though, he has turned the botanic garden around. It pleases lots of visitors and if you haven’t been, do go!

Timothy’s legacy for me are The Merton Borders designed by James Hitchmough, the Professor of Horticultural Ecology at Sheffield University responsible for designing parts of the Olympic Park. This is the largest cultivated area in the garden, occupying 955 square metres and Tom Price, the garden’s Curator, also deserves great praise for their inception. These borders are stunning now. However they began life as sandy plains covered in jute in 2008 and stayed that way for sometime. James Hitchmough can be seen sowing the seeds in a short film on the botanic garden’s website (www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk/botanic-garden-film).

You can imagine the initial response when visitors saw a sandy, weedy area almost devoid of plants. However sowing seeds, though riskier than using pot-grown plants, is more sustainable because there are no plastic pots or compost. The end result, carefully following James’ design, is more natural too. Once the seeds have germinated there is no watering, staking or fertiliser, just a dense sea of plants on different levels flowering through the seasons before setting seed. Although labour-intensive and puny to start with, once established these borders are dynamic eye-pleasers. James Hitchmough, the designer, was inspired by wild landscapes and uses American plants sourced from the Central to Southern Great Plains through to the Colorado Plateau and into California. The East South African plants come from latitudes above 1000m and the European flora from Southern Europe to Turkey and across Asia to Siberia.

Schemes like this involve a leap of faith and the next day I found myself at RHS Wisley in Surrey. They planted Hitchmough meadow a year ago and it’s looking thin and patchy. I was able to say: wait, it’ll be worth it! Part of me gloated, though, because our botanic garden got there before Wisley.

If I were a bee I couldn’t resist the Showy Beardtongue, (Penstemon cobaea) with its huge gloxinia-like purple flowers. It’s almost as exuberant as Timothy Walker, whom I salute.