A little corner patch of our wartime zoo keeper’s allotment, Newquay Zoo, August 2017
National Allotments Week 2017 has just come to an end (14 to 20 August 2017) – some great historic images on this history of allotments website:
https://www.learningwithexperts.com/gardening/blog/the-history-of-allotments
Goodbye Horse power, welcome to mechanised farming in the drive for more home grown food security … WW2 era farming advert from The Countryman, 1940s, in our World War Zoo Gardens collection
WordPress my trusty blog host have left me a happy blogaversary message that this weekend was the 8th anniversary of signing up to WordPress.com and starting our World War Zoo Gardens blog at Newquay Zoo in August 2009.
https://www.newquayzoo.org.uk/
My garden’s eighth blogaversary surprise present, a yellow poppy poking out amongst sneaky ferns (I love ferns!) that thrive in the shade below beautiful Globe Artichokes – great enrichment for our macaque monkeys. August 2017
Our wartime zoo garden left me a surprise this weekend, a bright yellow poppy! Nothing traditional like a red one …
Over 270 posts later, near 100,000 views and around 40,000 visitors so far, this is not a bad little blog footprint for a very tiny patch of dug up lawn in eight years.
Looking back at the first entries in August 2009 is really interesting as we hurriedly prepared for our wartime zoo garden launch weekend in August 2009.
The reproduction wartime garden signs are little rusty now and difficult to replace but the wartime zoo garden is still going strong August 2017
This launch weekend in 2009 was well timed to link with the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two in late August / early September 1939, remembered here https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/70-years-today-on-from-the-outbreak-of-war/
Some early thoughts on how European zoos survived wartime
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/long-ago-and-far-away-%e2%80%a6/
The blitzed remains of Berlin Zoo’s elephant house and its surviving elephant during the bombing raids of 1943/44 (Original photo in our archive collection).
Familar pest control problems August 2009 that have not changed
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/disaster-strikes/
Personal memories and family stories August 2009
A family story in August 2009 from my late mother about scrumping for apples in Vera Lynn’s Garden. Vera Lynn is still with us, her centenary this year, my wartime evacuee mother sadly not.
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/scrumping-apples-in-vera-lynns-garden/
Some early research on how London Zoo survived wartime
“But with the beginning of 1939 reality was brought home at last. Beneath its canopy of blimps [anti-aircraft or barrage balloons] London set about evacuation, the building of underground retreats, the distribution of gas masks.
Zoology gave way to first-aid and fire-fighting courses…
When on September 3rd the long expected blow fell, an emergency committee was set up. With a big cash balance in hand the [Zoological Society of London] was confident that it could “see it through” …
In deference to public hysteria the poisonous snakes were decapitated … The panda, elephants and African Rhinoceros were evacuated to Whipsnade …
In company with all other places of entertainment etc. where crowds might gather to the risk of public safety, the zoo closed its gates …”
The Zoo Story, L.R. Brightwell, 1950s, p. 225-6.
Breaking ground and digging up the lion house lawn August 2009
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/digging-up-the-lawns-at-newquay-zoo/
Richard (our then zoo gardener) or his legs “Digging for Victory”, removing the first turf for our wartime zoo garden August 2009.
Double Trench-digging for beginners August 2009
Our World War Zoo Garden after eight years 2009-2017 (August 2017)
An early link to our sister Zoo at Paignton Zoo and their strange wartime experiences, stories that we have followed up over the years. https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/please-do-not-eat-the-peacocks-when-visiting-the-zoo/
https://www.paigntonzoo.org.uk
Fine Abbott Thayer disruptive colouration camouflage on a Newquay Zoo peacock, 2017 – this didn’t stop hungry American GIs eating their ancestors at Paignton Zoo just before D-Day 1944. http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/4/hiddentalents.php
The outline of plans for our wartime zoo garden launch weekend at the end of August 2009 remind me how busy we were preparing everything in time:
Winter garden work – in the library or armchair, planning your coming year’s crop plans and trying new plants using handy wartime advice even in cartoon / strip form from the papers. Items from part of the Newquay Zoo wartime life collection, garden launch weekend, August 2009
The wartime garden launch weekend in August 2009 went well and also saw Vera Lynn back in the album charts!https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/first-day-of-our-wartime-zoo-gardens-display/
Beautiful Rhubard Chard, great favourite of our monkeys, growing August 2017
More edible leaves and colourful, tasty flowers of our Nasturtiums – a treat for some of our animals and visitors, August 2017
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/last-strawberries-of-a-slug-summer/
This 25th August 2009 blog entry had the hopeful postscript about a new US president:
“One day hopefully all zoos will have their own Victory Gardens. They have one I hear at The White House now to mark Barack Obama’s arrival. I think we have a long way to go in the zoo before we get to self sufficiency, but from small acorns …”
Then to finish our look back at August 2009 with one of the fantastic images we uncovered of life at London Zoo in September 1939
Taking shelter at London Zoo in September 1939, a sandbagged tunnel under the road (Zoo and Animal magazine, November 1939)
If you go to the Archive dropdown menu to the right, you can sample some of the last eight years of delights from our 1940s allotment gardening, wartime zoo and wartime gardening research from WW1 to WW2 and beyond.
Not forgetting that this colurful and scented garden is a practical and peaceful memorial to the many zoo and botanic gardens staff affected by war since 1914, many of whose stories we have uncovered since 2009. (photo August 2017)
What next for the World War Zoo Gardens and its blog?
Since 2009 many school garden and wartime garden projects, thrift and recession allotments and their blogs have come and gone, gardens and blogs both being ephemeral things.
Education changes, which led to a new primary National Curriculum in 2013/14 in England and Wales, have sadly seen, at one low point, no WW2 content in the primary history curriculum. This uncertainty has greatly affected uptake of wartime zoo workshops for schools. https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/world-war-zoo-gardens-workshops-for-schools-at-newquay-zoo/
Thankfully primary schools can still, with a little creative curriculum imagination, study WW2 as one of the “turning points in British History since 1066″ and we are rewriting our workshops to reflect this.
Mark Norris delivering one of our World War Zoo Gardens workshop days in ARP uniform, 2014. Volunteer Ken our ‘Home Guard’ is shyly sitting out of the photo!
It has been a great eight years so far since 2009, working with and meeting a wide range of people, amongst the highlights of which I think of talking to pupils in our wartime zoo school workshops, attending re-enactors weekends, meeting former landgirls and evacuees, linking with staff at Kew Gardens, Chester and London Zoo and chats with thousands of zoo visitors over the allotment garden fence.
Primate Keeper Nicole harvesting flowering chives as enrichment for monkeys, 2012. She returned in August 2017 from the Dutch zoo where she now works to see how Newquay Zoo and its gardens are doing (Image: Mark Norris)
The wartime zoo garden has been a great practical resource for our Newquay Zoo keepers since 2009. It has provided scented herbs, edible flowers and leaves and many fine fresh vegetables to feed and enrich the lives and enclosures of many of our most endangered zoo animals. None of the animals were that fussed about our 1940s potato varieties though.
Eight years of blogposts, articles, talks and conference papers has led to lots of interesting links with other zoos, botanic gardens and historians. http://www.bgci.org/resources/article/0729/
We have even won a national zoo award from BIAZA for “best use of planting in a zoo landscape feature / design” in November 2011.
Newquay Zoo’s wartime gardener and blogger Mark Norris with wartime issue spade and BIAZA award for best plants in a landscape feature and design, November 2011.
Hopefully our garden project will still be here in two year’s time for our World War Zoo Gardens Tenth Anniversary in 2019.
May 2019 is also Newquay Zoo’s own 50th Birthday, which will keep us busy https://newquayzoohistory.wordpress.com/
2019 will also see the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of WW2, many of its participants rapidly passing away and also the wrapping up of the WW1 centenary 1914-1919.
Plenty to blog about, plenty of new stories to uncover.
Thanks to all the Newquay Zoo staff and many many others who have been involved so far with our World War Zoo Gardens project since 2009.
Hundreds of thousands of zoo visitors have stopped to read this attractive World War Zoo Gardens sign at Newquay Zoo since we put it up in 2011.
This post (No. 275) sums up perfectly what World War Zoo Gardens is about, being a little bit of looking back to the past, an update on the present and a glimpse towards the future.
Happy Blogaversary!
Blogposted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, 8th Blogaversary weekend of the 12th / 13th August 2017.
Percy Izzard, Homeland: A Book of Country Days (1918)
As a follow up to yesterday’s post on Homeland, Percy Izzard’s book of nature writing on the British countryside during the First World War, here are several more daily entries. A book well worth tracking down second-hand.
Some deal with the changing agricultural landscape, such as noticing (March 28th 1917) that “It is interesting to see how quickly the birds have become accustomed to the motor plough. The strange form and immense noise of the machine …”
March 25th (1917) “And although the flowers were few when you think what this day has seen in other years, never did they open to a world readier to welcome them”
welcome to a world weary not only of the long winter, but also the war?
British farming and the countryside was facing difficulties by 1917 from poor harvests and the call up of male farm workers. Add to this the demands of feeding several armies overseas. From early in the year, the unrestricted submarine warfare of the German U boat blockade of Britain increased the sinking of merchant shipping bound for Britain with imported food from around the Empire and world.
These were pre-war cheap and plentiful food imports that we had come to rely on, much to the detriment of pre-war British farming.
Both rationing (1918) and a form of WW2 style Dig For Victory in 1917 were eventually organised in Britain in WW1.
We will feature more from Homeland by Percy Izzard in late March / early April 2017, when the quiet world of nature in Britain that he works hard to convey can be read 100 years on as (directly ? deliberately?) at odds with events overseas, the Battle of Arras (9 April to 16 May 1917) in France.
This battle would involve many of Izzard’s audience of “soldier lads” who read his daily nature column in the Daily Mail in the trenches. Forming a valuable bit of escapism, these short daily columns would be adapted and edited to become his book Homeland: A Year Of Country Days in mid 1918.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arras_(1917)
The Battle of Arras would see the deaths on active service of several of the zoo staff, botanic gardens staff and naturalists that we have been researching through the World War Zoo Gardens project.
Blogposted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.
Secret carrots – part of our wartime zoo schools workshop trail.
Read more about the exciting wartime history of carrots on the Carrot Museum website (I don’t get to type that sentence very often!)
http://carrotmuseum.co.uk/history4.html
Another of our blogposts on the interesting story about how diets and rationing were linked to WW2 through the pioneering work of nutritionist Elsie Widdowson:
https://worldwarzoogardener1939.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/elsie-widdowson-and-ww2-rationing/
Sadly I believe that the Tomato Museum on Guernsey (mentioned in the BBC TV 1990s The Wartime Kitchen Garden series) is no more.
It’s amazing what you find when you’re researching animal nutrition …
Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo, 18 October 2016
World War Zoo Gardens sign, Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, UK
It’s August. The schools are on 2016 holiday break and Newquay Zoo is lovely and busy with families. http://www.newquayzoo.org.uk/
I am also lovely and busy, preparing, repairing and refreshing schools and college workshop materials for September.
For the new City and Guilds 2016 syllabus on animal managment delivered at Newquay Zoo and Cornwall College Newquay, I have been preparing new sessions for my new 16-19 year old students on animal feeding and nutrition.
https://www.cornwall.ac.uk/campus/cornwall-college-newquay
http://www.newquayzoo.org.uk/education-clubs/cornwall-college
One of the challenging new elements is a bit of biochemistry (and it’s a long time since I did my O levels!)
In the course of finding simple enough ways for me to understand and explain the new nutrition bits such as the chemical structure of amino acids, protein bonds and suchlike, I came across this great BBC clip on Elsie Widdowson from CBBC’s Absolute Genius team Dick and Dom: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/zf9rkqt
Dr. Elsie Who?
I feel I should know the name, as I have been looking at wartime gardening and rationing since 2009 as part of the World War Zoo gardens project workshops for schools.
Reading the story brought back very vague memories of this story being noted in passing in histories of food in wartime, rationing and gardening.
So who was Elsie Widdowson?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Widdowson
A trip to the kitchens at King’s College Hospital, London, brought her into contact with Professor Robert McCance, who was carrying out research into the best diets for people with diabetes. The two bonded and started on a research partnership that was to span 60 years.
They studied the effect poor nutrition has in adulthood and their book The Chemical Composition of Foods, published in 1940, became the “bible” on which modern nutritional thinking is founded.
Soon after the war started, she and Prof McCance lived for weeks in the Lake District eating the diet which they thought the British should consume during World War II to maintain basic health.They also cycled round Cambridge to study the importance of energy expenditure on diet. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6228307.stm)
There’s a new volume for the World War Zoo gardening bookshelf – The Chemical Composition of Foods, published in 1940 – and the 7th edition (2014 version) is still in print on Amazon from the Food Standards agency today.
Delabole Co-op and Camelford stores in Cornwall for meat, registered with Haddy’s for other rationed items, (is Haddy’s still going?) this well used (light brown adult RB1) Ration Book from Cornwall is part of our wartime life collection (copyright: World war Zoo gardens project, Newquay Zoo).
Widdowson and McCance headed the first mandated addition of vitamins and mineral to food. Their work began in the early 1940s, when calcium was added to bread. They were also responsible for formulating the wartime rationing of Britain during World War II. (Elsie Widdowson’s Wikipedia entry)
Elsie Widdowson, wartime rationing star and Mother of the modern loaf as this BBC report named her – that’s one to chew on when you’re eating your lunchtime sarnies!
Elsie Widdowson and her scientific partner, Robert McCance, oversaw the first compulsory addition of a substance to food in the early 1940s, when calcium was introduced to bread. They were also responsible for formulating war-time rationing – some experts say that under their diet of mainly bread, vegetables and potatoes, that was when Britain was at its healthiest.(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6228307.stm)
A biography of sorts exists – McCance and Widdowson: A Scientific Partnership of 60 Years, 1933-93 A Commemorative Volume about Robert McCance CBE, FRS and Elsie May Widdowson CBE, FRS published / edited by Margaret Ashwell in 1993.
Interesting medical history blog entry by Laura Dawes about early wartime food security concerns in Britain with a brilliant wartime photograph of McCance and Widdowson:
Rugged Science: McCance left, Widdowson centre, Andrew Huxley (student volunteer) right, testing our rations and nutrition ideas in the extremes of the Lake District, winter 1939. Source of image: Doctorthen blog
They also served … Thanks Elsie Widdowson and Robert McCance for keeping my family fit and healthy throughout World War Two and beyond!
Lunchtime calls…
Blogposted in lunchtime by Mark Norris, World War Zoo gardens project, Newquay Zoo, 18 August 2016.
Fairly random WW2 photographic postcard from our World War Zoo Gardens collection entitled “Digging For Victory”, the name of the Government backed drive to encourage all from schools, scouts, workplaces, families and even zoos to grow their own food.
The back gives really not much more for information, other than the jokey family tone and the cub scout hat. It reads “Your daft-in-law, doing his turn. Good Scout”.
Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project. Newquay Zoo
Field poppies in the World War Zoo Gardens, Newquay Zoo July 2016 (Image: Mark Norris)
A busy schools week of education workshops, looking at animal enrichment and nutrition, so I have been raiding our World War Zoo Wartime Garden for scented herbs or enrichment scatter feed for monkeys such as edible Nasturtium flowers and leaves, globe artichokes or colourful Ruby and Yellow Chard.
Mixed in amongst these flowers and leaves were some beautiful Field Poppies.
Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo
Check out my recent article on our World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.in the International Zoo Educators Association IZEA journal, this past copy is now available in pdf download form:
Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens project, Newquay Zoo.
Just a few photographs to celebrate our World War Zoo wartime garden project here at Newquay Zoo, May 2016, entering its eighth summer.
A 1940s stirrup pump lies hidden amongst the colourful Chard and Garlic, rusty but still in fine working order.
The gardener’s wartime steel helmet hangs on the garden gate, ready to grab in case the air raid siren sounds …
Bright Lights, a collection of colourful Chard overwintered and ready to cut as colourful edible bouquets for enriching our monkey diets. Delicious.
Another year of Globe Artichokes awaits, another monkey favourite, complete with earwigs.
The strange bird table affair is not mounting for an air raid siren but where we place our portable speakers for the 2.30 Lion talk a few yards away.
Sparrows dustbathe between the Broad bean rows. The Meerkat section Robin follows the hoe or watering can. Pesky Peacocks nibble emerging shoots.
Rosemary, Curry Plant, Thyme, Mint, Lemon Balm, Nasturtiums, Leeks and Broad Beans are all waiting their turn, their moment and their edible or sensory enrichment use.
Dig for Victory, Dig For Plenty and ‘Hasten slowly’ as Mr Middleton would say. Happy Gardening!
Posted by Mark Norris, World War Zoo Gardens Project, Newquay Zoo, 17 May 2016.
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