Gardening and garden centres for growing wartime boys, tomboys and garden gnomes. “Go to it, lads!” (The Boy’s Own Paper, August 1940)

Bumper August holiday edition of the blog: The World War Zoo garden at Newquay Zoo celebrates its first anniversary  on August 31st. Packed with extra reading and some fun things to do!

 Happy National Allotments Week 9th – 15th August 2010 http://www.nsalg.org.uk

Wartime holiday reading - the dramatic front cover (The Altmark story) of Boy's Own Paper August 1940 Price 6d (Image from the World War Zoo collection, Newquay Zoo)

August, our first garden anniversary amid school holidays with Newquay Zoo www.newquayzoo.org.uk and busy local Cornish beaches, full of children and their families enjoying sunshine, picnics, animal feeding talks and each other’s company (along with the odd temper tantrum and family row). Many stop to look at the fresh veg, flowers and busy bees of the World War Zoo garden, soon to be celebrating its first anniversary at the end of August 2010. Sadly the cares of the office and family back home are never far away, judged by awkward mobile phone conversations. 

 Holidays in wartime were increasingly more of a ‘staycation’ variety, with ‘Is Your Journey Really Necessary?’ posters and petrol rationing, wired off and mined beaches with troops tensely awaiting invasion and Home Guards watching the shoreline from pillboxes, rather than today’s RNLI lifeguards. 

Spot the pillbox on your Cornish summer holiday. Without camouflage now but still blends in well! Protecting the harbour at Porthleven in Cornwall still, 2010, 70 years on from construction at the height of invasion fears. (Image: World war Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo)

Many of the older generation still loyally return to Cornwall where they were brought as children on family holidays or as evacuees. Newquay has recently seen another anniversary trip by staff and boys of Gresham’s School, 70 years on from the school, like Benenden Girls School, moving from the battlefields of the South Coast to Newquay and Cornwall. The holiday period of this time is vividly captured in Bettye Grey’s reprinted memoir of Newquay life, “Oh Get On!”

Fabulous adverts for childhood toys and boys' careers, August 1940 Boy's Own Paper (Image: World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo)

Already in early August there must be children moaning “I’m bored!” to parents. What would a wartime school child do in their extended holidays, either in their evacuation centres or  increasingly at home returned from  evacuation billets when not much was happening in the ‘Phoney war’ and often with  no schools to go to?

 In a battered and yellowing copy of the Boy’s Own Paper for August 1940 in the Newquay Zoo World War Zoo gardens wartime life archive can be found the following rousing instructions from the Editor for young men (and their sisters):

 “Be British [quoted as the last words of Captain Smith of the Titanic] and summon up your nerve and heart and sinew to carry on with your job – your harvesting, your waste-paper-collecting, the repairing of the school air raid shelters, black out blinds, fire service, first aid.”

“Write home often, and tell those anxious people how jolly all right you are; and let your whole being throb with the almighty unconquerable challenge –“Let them come!” Brace your muscles every time you think of it, let it resound from your spade when you give an extra hefty jab into the earth of the school garden plot. Let your nostrils dilate, your eyes kindle with a fierce gleam as, with fists clenched, you surge out that mighty challenge between set teeth. Go to it, lads!”  (Editorial, Boy’s Own Paper, August 1940)

 Never has gardening been so breathlessly described in such “ripping” terms. Another article begins:

 “All of you who have a garden have, I know, been digging for victory, and now your crops are up you can see what can be done by hard work, and penny packets of seed. Every potato, parsnip, carrot, beetroot, every row of peas or beans, every lettuce or tomato on your plot of ground is going to help us win through, and what is more, it is your very own contribution to victory. Having dug for victory, I am now going to talk t you about feeding for victory. I don’t mean by this that you should sit down and eat up all your crops. I mean feeding livestock.”

“Why not keep one or two rabbits, a few chickens or half a dozen bantams? … and some have a large enough garden, perhaps to keep a pig, or there may be adjacent to the garden a rough piece of meadow or waste land to poor to grow crops but where a goat could pick up a living and provide you with milk … How ripping, too, if there was also honey for tea from your own bees … doubly welcomed now we are rationed with sugar …” (“Feeding For Victory”, Boy’s Own Paper, August 1940).

Gardening for Boys - Boy's Own Paper, August 1940 (Image: World War Zoo collection, Newquay Zoo)

Followed by W. E. Shewell-Cooper’s Garden and Allotment What You Can Do series, August’s article  being ‘How To Get Good Garden Crops’: 

“August is a harvesting month. It isn’t as big a harvesting month as September, of course, but there is lots of harvesting work to do. Take the French beans and runner beans, for instance …” 

Not many years ago, there was a brief nostalgia  flourish of the “Dangerous Book for Boys” genre and not-so-dangerous companion book for girls. Many journalists and childhood experts  lamented the modern safety-obsessed, neglectful or over parenting of the ‘play safe, play at home, computer and text obsessed, short attention spanned, foul-mouthed, under-parented, disrespectful, drunk, promiscuous, overweight and more miserable generation’ of 21^st century children and teenagers in Britain than anywhere else in the developed world.  Many in Newquay have  been fighting back recently against  adverse publicity  regarding this generation on holiday without parents for the first time.   

My friend Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, Detoxing Childhood, and 21^st Century Boys (all by Orion, see www.suepalmer.co.uk ) would no doubt approve of the vigorous and earnest pursuits suggested or sold to Boy’s Own Paper readers in the August 1940 edition.

There are plenty of activity ideas “for the growing boy” in the Boy’s Own Paper August 1940 (B.O.P Motto: Quicquid Agunt pueri nostri farrago libelli, or “Whatever boys do makes up the mixture of our little book”)  for boy craft of days gone by. Amongst the rousing tales of daring-do and technical articles on “Submarines: what they are like and how they are operated” (at a time of rationing and increased Merchant shipping loss to Nazi U-boats) are some fascinating adverts.

More activity ideas and "knowledge for the growing boy", adverts page, Boy's Own Paper, August 1940 (Image: World War Zoo gardens, Newquay Zoo)

What boy could be bored, tempted by naval careers or radio officer training colleges (“A career of national importance in wartime with an assured future in peace-time”), Skywaymen of the BOP Flying League and their aircraft recognition card games, Cold Ovaltine “the best summer drink”, Brylcreem and discreet booklets on “Sex Problems … if you are puzzled about the secrets of birth” in “Knowledge for the Growing Boy” (6d, post free.)

What does the holiday weather matter as wartime boy when there is always the latest model anti-tank gun or make-it-yourself ship or plane models, photographic chemicals, stamp collecting advice care of Stanley Gibbons (in the centenary year of the Penny Black and Penny Post 6^th May 1840), cricketing tips, pen pals seeking fellow “aviation enthusiast” or “cricket enthusiast”, explosive chemistry experiments, canoeing or cycling adventures (with blackout shielded headlamps, naturally). There were of course for some, visits to the local zoo, if it had reopened as a morale booster and a touch of normal pre-war life. 

Battle of Britain in your hands for the growing wartime boy! Frog kits were the forerunner of postwar Airfix kits, and taught valuable craft skills and aircraft recognition - friend or foe - for young and old alike! (Image: World War Zoo collection, Newquay Zoo.)

Cold Ovaltine! The ultimate summer drink, showing lots of busy boy and tomboy sporting activities to fill the holidays, as advertised in August 1940, Boy's Own Paper (Image: World War Zoo collection, Newquay Zoo)

 There was also the salvage of aluminium kitchen goods to collect and sort out, as part of COGS (Children on Government Salvage), during the July and August 1940 appeal by Lord Beaverbrook for saucepans for Spitfires! This campaign features comically in William at War, one of the Just William books reprinted in the 2009 “Still Naughty at Ninety” anniversary of Richmal Crompton’s boy wonder. Find more in the  www.panmacmillan.com  the A- Z author list.  

The life of a 1940s boy (or tomboy girl) seems exhausting and busy by modern standards! Amongst many memoirs and histories of wartime children, Mike Brown has written a fabulous short Shire Library Book on Wartime Childhood www.shirebooks.co.uk which illustrates the varied activities, challenges and opportunities of my parent’s childhood. Two of our handmade wartime toys – a Spitfire and a wooden sliding puzzle – from the Newquay Zoo wartime life collection can be found on the BBC www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld

 If you want to recapture some of this indoor childhood activity, Airfix are very proudly advertising their kits again through http://www.airfix.com/  in the pages of BBC History Magazine http://www.bbchistorymagazine.com/  including an anniversary  Battle of Britain range and RAF airfield (just like the one my granddad served on) with proceeds to veterans’ charities. The Airfix Club flies again for a whole new generation of paint-splattered boys and girls!

Setting up our World War Zoo display in the Grow Your Own allotment section of Trelawney Garden Centre, Wartime garden display on right, minibeasts being unpacked on the left.The lavender and Buddleia were alive with bees throughout! (Image: World War Zoo collection, Newquay Zoo)

So “get to it, lads” (and lasses) at your local garden centre!  Newquay Zoo and its World War Zoo wartime gardens display were ‘on tour’ at the weekend of July 31^st and August 1st, as guests of  Trelawney Garden Centre at Sladesbridge near Wadebridge. We were very busy for two days showcasing wildlife friendly gardening, helped out by giant minibeasts from the Newquay Zoo collection, along with amazing phasmid leaf and stick insects from Kevin Roberts, Trelawney’s events manager, as an active member of the PSG Phasmid Study Group. http://www.trelawney.co.uk/wadebridge/index.htm  

 http://phasmid-study-group.org/

Hopefully some of these children might go on to join  the AES Bugs  Club, junior section of the Amateur Entomologists Society http://www.amentsoc.org/bug-club/

Amongst many welcome cups of tea from their friendly staff, we chatted to many hundreds of children and adults of all ages, from all over the country along with a puzzled elderly couple of Cornwall’s many German ‘garden tourists’. My German is  a little ‘Rustig’, especially when it comes to explaining the wartime garden display, marginally better on insects, habitats and camouflage (‘Muster unt Tarnung’).    

Gardening was also part of this manly (boyish or tomboyish) existence, amongst the columns of nature notes such as “The Wonders of Crab Life” by H. Chapman Pincher BSc, (surely not the controversial Spycatcher writer of later years?) – and “Through the Hedge and over the Downs” by ‘Hedgerow’. We saw lots of native wildlife such as bees, birds and dragonflies flitting and buzzing around Trelawney Garden Centre and its lakes (with rumours of kingfishers), amid many chats about our live insects, sloughed spider moults, wasp nest sections or dried specimens of Death’s Head Hawk moth.  ‘Hedgerow’ notes topically for August 1940 “What to look out for this month: Hawk moth larvae; Privet Hawk on Privet: Eyed Hawk on willow, Lime Hawk on lime or elm, Elephant Hawk on Willow Herb.  Dunlin or Ox birds by the seashore.  Corn Buntings and yellowhammers by the Cornfields. Butcher Birds’ larders in the hedges. Teazles in Bloom. Wasps’ nests.” A refreshing sight for the sore limbs of many a Land Girl or Victory harvest schoolchild working in the August fields, but also sign of how Britain’s wildlife has changed in 70 years, If you haven’t signed it yet, sign up via www.signtheletter.org.uk   to the RSPB’s Letter to The Future campaign www.rspb.org.uk

L.R. Brightwell's cheerful nature notes illustrations to Hedgerow's gnomes and gardens August 1940 column for the Boy's Own Paper. (Image: Newquay Zoo, World War Zoo collection)

This last Boy’s Own Paper article is quirkily illustrated by L.R. Brightwell, cartoonist and illustrator of many zoo and nature books (see our archive blog entries on his Story of London Zoo, August 2009). Our partner college Cornwall College Newquay www.cornwall.ac.uk/newquay , quiet without hundreds of degree students for a few weeks, has some original Brightwell paintings. There are several more in the care of  the retired College manager and author Dr. Mike Kent, no doubt vigorously rambling  around the Cornish countryside and coast path collecting materials for his modern hedgerow notes books about Cornwall http://www.alisonhodge.co.uk/ShowDetails.asp?id=125 We were interested to note and already tracking down in detective mode the mention of ‘Next Month! Look out for … Wartime and The Zoos by Sydney Moorhouse FRGS, illustrated by L.R. Brightwell, FZS” promised for Boy’s Own Paper, September 1940. When we track it down, we’ll share it with you on this blog.

“Children’s Gardens” by Edwin L. Howard (the Studio Publications, 2s. 6d.) is favourably reviewed by ‘Hedgerow’ in Boy’s Own Paper, August 1940,  who notes amongst bird and water garden designs that “I expect you boys will like the Zoo Garden best, but your sisters will prefer the Enchanted Flower Garden.” A second hand book to look out for, predating many recent books and seed company’s ranges (such as www.mr-fothergills.co.uk or  http://www.suttons.co.uk/grow_your_own.htm for children’s gardening. Suttons have agreat gardening blog too:  http://www.growyourownclub.co.uk 

Many of these colourful cartoon packets, much like the Doctor Carrot, Squander Bug  and Potato Pete (see below picture) wartime cartoon figures of “eat more veg”, were excitedly bought by children and parents at Trelawney Garden Centre to help pass the holiday time, many proudly telling me about what they were growing at home or at school. Grow It! Magazine had a good article on children’s gardens by Angela Youngman in the July 2010 issue http://www.growitmag.com , whilst the Eden Project books for inspiring child gardeners by Jo Readman are also full of ideas www.edenproject.com

Gnome Guard on parade from The World War Zoo gardens collection at Trelawney Garden Centre, July / August 2010

Our khaki clad Gnome Guard also travelled out to Trelawney Garden Centre at the weekend as part of our wartime garden display. Here he was greeted by many other gnomes awaiting employment and a home, dressed in their civvies and colourful demob suits. The place was like a Victorian hiring fair for gnomes, all with the tools or symbols of their trade.  So far our Gnome Guard member of the LDV, introduced to the World War Zoo gardens to mark the July 1940 renaming of the Home Guard, has not been stolen by gnome liberators. Yet.

Gnome guard on parade. Gnome Guard on parade from The World War Zoo gardens collection at Trelawney Garden Centre, July / August 2010

But before anyone questions his willingness to serve or wartime authenticity, gnomes bizarrely feature in the Boy’s Own Paper August 1940 nature notes by ‘Hedgerow’ on fungi, at the height of the Battle of Britain when the Editor worries not only about increasing  paper rationing but about the threatened invasion “By the time you read this that foul fiend Apollyon may have struck at Britain, our land”). The columnist ‘Hedgerow’ whimsically notes: “One of the most handsome and decorative is the Scarlet Fly Agaric. This is copied by those who make garden ornaments and sold with gnomes to furnish a miniature wood or rockery. In my wood they grow freely. As I have a real wood I have no need for china gnomes, for they say there real gnomes in the woods and that they hold their meetings around the little red tables of the Scarlet Fly Agarics. I have never seen them, but as I write my nature notes under the light of an oil lamp in my little house in the wood  I often wonder whether they are playing around outside or spying to see if I am properly blacked out.”   (Boy’s Own Paper August 1940 nature notes)

So hopefully, during the summer holidays, you might like to paint your own china gnome, if you don’t have your own real wood and fungi. Wherever you are you could grow one thing, even if it’s in a tiny pot, as part of Garden Organic’s www.onepotpledge.org 2010. (Apparently if I encourage several others to sign up, I earn my very own Gardening Guru membership card or badge. How Boy’s Own Paper is that!) More growing advice can be found on the http://www.rhs.org.uk/ and www.bbc.co.uk/digin  BBC Dig In campaign pages. You can also sign up to “do one thing” campaign, part of International Year of Biodiversity  2010,   http://www.biodiversityislife.net/?q=do-one-thing the theme of some of our summer 2010 activity weeks at Newquay Zoo www.newquayzoo.org.uk

Finally, if you are in London this August,  look out for wartime chickens and WLA Land girls! There is a Wartime Farm outside the Imperial War Museum 12-15 and 19-22 August (admission free) as part of their Ministry of Food wartime rationing exhibition, (small admission charge to exhibition). These are both mentioned in the August 2010 Grow Your Own magazine www.growfruitandveg.co.uk  has a well illustrated article by Sara Cork interviewing wartime Land girl Joan Proctor. The main exhibition Ministry of Food www.food.iwm.org.uk continues until early January 2011 and marks the 70^th anniversary of rationing and also the Dig for Victory Campaign.

Hopefully there were  lots of bumper holiday ideas on our blog to keep the whole family busy this August (or winter!) Off to try some Cold Ovaltine! 

Hooray We passed our 6000th page view today on 8th August 2010!

For all enquiries or comments re. World War Zoo gardens project, contact us via the comments page below.

If stuck inside, 21^st century child style, you might like to check out our past blog entries, look at the macaque monkey webcam on www.newquayzoo.org.uk or join our World War Zoo gardens’ official Facebook page (to eventually replace our original world war zoo worldwarzoogardener pages). 

Look out for future blog articles on the Vive la French Marigolds! The Entente Cordiale: Friend or Foe, Garden allies, pests and sympathetic planting – flowers and herbs in wartime garden.

The ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ remembered, rare macaque monkey webcam and roughly torn (Jamie Oliver style) wartime leeks and cabbage fresh for the zoo animals from the Wartime zoo keepers’ garden at Newquay Zoo

Symbol of the 1940 Blitzkrieg, Dunkirk and the rapid Nazi occupation of Europe, this German Army Panzer tank regiment metal cap badge features the laurel wreath of victory, Nazi Swastika and eagle symbols and image of an early German Panzer tank. Worn proudly in early years of victory, ironically this badge was found abandoned in Germany at the end of the war in 1945 by Major F.H. Tyler of the British Army. Donated to the World War Zoo gardens project by Major Tyler's family, relatives of a zoo staff member. .

This Dunkirk anniversary weekend,  there have many tearful old men (and not forgetting the women who love them) remembering the hell of the beaches of Dunkirk  and the ‘miracle’ of their escape by sea in small boats back to Blighty 70 years ago. Many were left behind, wounded or imprisoned as Europe was overrun by a Blitzkrieg of Panzer and Stuka, Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe.  

What did Dunkirk and the fall of Europe mean for the zoos and botanic gardens? In 1939, 75% of food in Britain was imported through shipping. This meant that  food from distant Empire or later Commonwealth countries  like India, Australia and Canada in merchant ships had to run the gauntlet of U-Boat submarine blockades, torpedo and aerial attack, despite convoy protection.   

No wonder ‘food miles’ (as they are known today) were a concern  of an early poster slogan,  “Let your Shopping, Help our Shipping” (many wonderful posters viewable or for sale on the Imperial War Museum website and shop www.iwm.org.uk).  Britain and its zoos lost their food supplies from European countries, especially in the Mediterranean,  and the market gardens of the Channel Islands. Onions, tomatoes and other crops became hard to obtain. Strangely, mealworms, a staple insect food for many zoo animals still today, was mostly obtained prewar from Germany, as one British zoo director regretted.  

Before long, botanic gardens and glasshouses, greenhouses, zoo lawns and empty enclosures would be transformed into tomato farms, veg patches, along with pig, rabbit and chicken enclosures by an enterprising and hungry staff.  

Like those in Poland, many zoos across Holland, Belgium and France fell under German occupation, ironically a nation noted for their great interest in zoos. Many British zoo keepers and directors would have had visited these forward-thinking German zoos and known their staff or sent animals there on breeding loan. Tragically for an international minded profession, this choice and option  did not exist by May and June 1940.  Many surviving and prize animals were spirited away to Germany, a story recounted by  Diane Ackerman in The Zoo Keeper’s Wife about Warsaw Zoo.  

Further stories about what happened to other European Zoos, Aquariums  and Botanic Gardens in wartime we are researching as part of the World War Zoo gardens project for a book due in 2011/12.  

The long-lasting damage that food and fuel shortages inflicted across zoos and botanic gardens in Britain and Europe was eclipsed by the firestorms of aerial bombing by both sides and battlefields raging across Berlin, Dresden, Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia  and parts of Japan. Little was left, for example,  of Berlin Zoo after the fighting for example, under a hundred animals from the many thousands in what was before the war regarded as one of the world’s leading zoo collections.  

Poignant photos in the Imperial War Museum collection show empty looking zoos in Hamburg Zoo (Germany) and Antwerp Zoo (Belgium) being used as DP (Displaced People) camps for Polish and Russian refugees, evacuees and German troops captured as prisoners of war locked into the strongly barred Lion House, all pictures difficult to look at without noticing  the eerie echo of the bars and wire of the concentration camps.  

Where the missing animals were from the lion house and other enclosures suggest its own sad story. Many of these refugee and POW camps  soon had scratch vegetable gardens to feed the inmates and also keep them busy, a tale well told in Kenneth Helphand’s recent book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in  Wartime  (available through Amazon and other suppliers).  

Our baby boom and red bottomed female Sulawesi Macaque monkey group exploring fresh leeks, enrichment from the World War Zoo wartime zoo keepers' veg garden at Newquay Zoo

The urge to garden and raise new life is something staff at Newquay Zoo share having nursed our fledgling ‘dig for victory’ veg patch on the Lion House Lawn through a poor summer and harsh winter  over the last year. This week, some of the long nurtured vegetables from 2009 have been harvested to make room for more planting. 

Leeks away! Robyn Silcock prepares to launch the first of our freshly dug leeks from our World War Zoo keepers' garden into the rare Sulawesi macaque monkey enclosure at Newquay Zoo, May 2010. Great enrichment, fresh picked with the soil still on the roots!

 Leeks (probably Musselburgh, a wartime variety) were  served up to our critically endangered Sulawesi Macaque monkeys within a few minutes and metres of being dug up – not bad counting food miles or for freshness,  still with soil on the roots. The young macaques  played with these, racing through the branches and along ropes, clutched like  a favoured doll or  must-have toy and status symbol, an inspiration to race and play vegetable tag.  The adult macaque monkeys peeled the leafy tips apart but were much more excited about the Perpetual Spinach, again another plant grown in the 1940s by wartime zoo keepers and recommended in the 1940s gardening books.  

Leeks with soil on the roots proved equally attractive (and sneezy!) to our rare (critically endangered) Yellow Breasted Capuchin Monkeys from Brazilian rainforests. Pat and Tux, two brothers,  ripped and tore the leeks about roughly in  a style that Jamie Oliver would approve, along with the enrichment bottles that our Junior Keeper made for them.     

African Pygmy goats in our small farm section demolished these giant leafy Savoy Ormskirk Late Green Cabbages, a wartime variety grown from seed in our World War Zoo Gardens at Newquay Zoo - Robyn serves up fresh lunch almost a year in the making!

African Pygmy goats quickly ate every scrap of the Savoy Cabbage Ormskirk Late Green, a variety recommended in the 1940s gardening books. Our critically endangered Visayan Warty Pigs, the world’s rarest pig from the Philippines, were not so impressed by ‘seconds fresh’  cabbage straight from the nearby earth. Noted for next year! 

Hopefully people visiting the zoo via our new macaque monkey web cam www.newquayzoo.org.uk saw this triumph of a Sulawesi Macaque baby boom (four youngsters born into the small group in one year) and patient nurturing of our wartime veg  garden come together at  our 3.15 p.m. ‘playing with your food’ enrichment talk.

As fresh as they get! One of our youngest Sulawsei Macaque monkeys puzzling over leeks, fallen from the sky, seconds after being freshly harvested with soil on its roots from the World War Zoo gardens zoo keepers' wartime veg garden, Newquay Zoo.

Unusual peacock sized garden pests are becoming a problem, something we’ll blog about in the next week.

Find out more about our project and the year long journey our wartime ‘dig for victory’ garden has taken from seed to Sulawesi Macaque monkey snack by reading past entries from the blog here.

From wartime 1940s allotments to modern times, you can read more about the hi-tech Verti Crop system of growing vegetables showcased by Kevin Frediani and the gardens team at our sister zoo Paignton Zoo www.paigntonzoo.org.uk. Opened in the 1920s, Paignton Zoo survived throughout war in the 1940s and is now at the cutting edge of plant technology in the 21st century.  

We value comments about our project and blog for the World War Zoo gardens project, you can find comment sections on the blog or contact us  via this blog.

Happy gardening!

Royal Mail marks 65th and 70th anniversaries of World War Two in stamps

Britain Alone 13 May 2010

Land Girls featured on the new 'Britain Alone' Royal Mail stamp issue, 13 May 2010

The Royal Mail is  very proud to announce our Britain Alone Special Stamp issue. It is Royal Mail’s tribute, 70 years on, to those who stood proud and defiant against the Axis powers in the dark days of 1940. The stories of their courage and fortitude make for an uplifting and fascinating read, as do the facts surrounding the evacuation from Dunkirk, which also features in this impressive special issue.

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/stamps/content1?catId=120900785&mediaId=121600780

Dunkirk is featured and a local historian at our recent wartime garden event informed me that fishing boats from Newquay and Cornwall were involved as ‘little ships’ in the Dunkirk rescue, a story we’ll follow up as we find more.

Our other zoo blog features Charles Darwin and wildlife on stamps, a joint project with RZSS Edinburgh Zoo  http://darwin200stampzoo.wordpress.com

Biodiversity Day, paper potters and 1940s wartime vegetable varieties – another busy week in the World War Zoo gardens at Newquay Zoo

Saturday 22^nd May 2010 is Biodiversity Day when our paper potters, stacks of old local newspapers from the Zoo Front Office (a press cuttings book is kept of all our media coverage) and big sack of Sutton’s sunflowers seeds will be out again (after a successful Wartime garden weekend earlier this month).

Visitors to Newquay Zoo www.newquayzoo.org.uk  can  pot up and take home a free wildlife gardening friendly sunflower during their visit.

Sunflowers from last year's zoo gardens, useful enrichment for animals and wildlfe ffriendly too!

 There’s also a chance to read and see more about wildlife gardening, nest boxes and the work of the Wildlife Trusts in our Native Wildlife Centre room, housing our Harvest Mice and next to our Sand Lizard section. That’s several things we’ve done this year for 2010 International Year of Biodiversity.

Paper pot maker in the wartime zoo garden, Newquay Zoo, 2010

 

We were asked often during the wartime weekend activities just past where we got our clever paper pot makers from. The paper potters came from Hen and Hammock http://www.henandhammock.co.uk and are FSC wood at £9.90 each plus post. A paper potter is also available as part of a beautiful larger planter set of FSC Oak wooden garden tools  at £33.90 including postage  from  the ever helpful Joe and Chris Fuller  at Mit Hus.  (Dear Father Christmas, if you read blogs, this is one very practical and beautiful present for  the World War Zoo wartime zoo gardener’s Christmas wish list).  http://www.mithus.co.uk/acatalog/Oak_Potting_Shed_Collection.html

Resolve to do one thing this year for biodiversity

We can all do at least one positive something for biodiversity this year. Like many groups such as our Zoo network of BIAZA http://www.biaza.org.uk ,  BIAZA members The Wildfowl and Wetland Trust, The RHS and Wildlife Trusts,  the World War Zoo gardens project at Newquay Zoo is supporting the UK’s 2010 International Year of Biodiversity campaign to Do One Thing.  Find out more at www.biodiversityislife.net 

If you’re not sure what to do, we have some suggestions below. And when you do it, tell your friends and family about it to encourage them to do something too. If you have a twitter account, don’t forget to follow @iybuk too and tell others what you’re doing. 

 Plant Conservation Day (on May 18th 2010) www.plantconservationday.org  has lots more information about ways of getting involved  http://bgci.org/plantconservationday. We’ll be planting some wartime varieties, heirloom or heritage varieties of vegetables and flowers in the wartime garden and try to save the seeds. 

You can find out more about heirloom varieties and local varieties of plants and seeds for your area at: 

 the Postcode Plants Database (produced by Flora for Fauna) www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/plants-fungi/postcode-plants

·                 Heritage Seed Library (HDRA) run by Garden Organic http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk

·                 http://www.squidoo.com/heritageseeds  for Seed Savers exchange, The Real Seed Catalogue etc, Emma Cooper’s  Alternative Kitchen Garden blog http://coopette.com/akg . and other lists for the UK and around the world

There are many suggestions of things we can all do for International Year of Biodiversity at http://www.biodiversityislife.net/?q=do-one-thing and from the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust website www.wwt.org.uk and Wild about gardens website www.wildaboutgardens.org.uk  : 

1.      plant some wildlife friendly mixtures of flowers

2.      save your seeds or plant heirloom varieties

3.      build a wildlife pond in the garden 

4.      install a water butt and connect the down pipe from the gutter to a water butt and connect the overflow of the water butt to the pond or garden

5.      become a member of conservation organisation

6.      volunteer at a conservation organisation

7.      adopt an animal (or vegetable  – see www.gardenorganic.org.uk)

8.      remember wildlife or conservation organisations in your will

9.      Don’t mow your lawn – an untidy garden encourages wildlife (we like this one a lot)

10.  Dig up your lawn (like we did with one at Newquay Zoo) and plant veg or apply for an allotment from your local council, or turn over some of your garden to growing your own. Check out the BBC Dig In campaign for lots of advice and allotment links.

Happy digging! Contact us at the World War Zoo gardens project via comments on this blog.

.

A first ABC of wartime vegetable varieties, our ‘free gift’ to you to celebrate Plant Conservation Day 2010, 18 May 2010 from the World War Zoo gardens at Newquay Zoo

Still growing strong and available today: Ormskirk Late cabbages, a wartime variety which has done survived winter well here since photographed on planting last summer 2009, World War Zoo gardens project.

Get involved and ‘Do One Thing’ for wildlife this year

Tuesday May 18^th 2010 is Global Plant Conservation Day, reminding us that our  vegetable and flower gardens are a strange mixture of plants and varieties from the local area and from all over the world.

 Some of these varieties are hundreds of years old and still growing strong.  Sadly others have become like the endangered zoo animals and rare breed livestock of the plant world, in need of heritage seed banks to preserve their quirkiness and unusual genes for a changing future.

Plant Conservation Day (on May 18th 2010)  www.plantconservationday.org  has lots more information about ways of getting involved  http://bgci.org/plantconservationday.

Our contribution? Bookwork as well as spadework. 

 I have been busy reading wartime gardening books from the zoo archive over the quieter winter months, the period when these wartime gardening books suggest polishing your spade, reading seed catalogues or planning your garden as there’s nothing much doing in the garden.  What I’ve been searching for (with an A to Z notebook handy) are the names of 1940s varieties in use and recommended during wartime, so as to find authentic varieties for our own plot.

This sonorous A to Z of wartime vegetable varieties is growing but still incomplete as I’m now checking them against many of the 2010 seed catalogues to see what survives in cultivation. I’ve selected below a short ABC of wartime vegetables as a taster  and will put the whole list on the blog and as part of a new ‘dig for victory’ / ‘war on waste’ schools garden pack in future (combining the history curriculum with the science, geography, healthy eating, sustainability   and growing schools gardens elements of primary school).

A first  draft 2010 ABC of 1940s Wartime vegetable varieties

 Work in progress: these have been compiled by the World War Zoo gardens project from lists in eleven 1940s gardening books, leaflets and magazines. The right hand column lists the code for eleven source books e.g. MGG and how often they are mentioned, so you get a rough idea of how widely recommended they were at the time.  We’ll publish the bibliography when the list is complete.

 Asparagus 

• Connover’s Colossal                                                                                                                  

Artichoke, Jerusalem 

• New White                                                       PG

 Artichoke, Globe

• Green Globe                                                                
• Purple Globe                                                     PG

 Artichoke, Chinese

 Bean, French Bean

• Bounteous                                                        
• Canadian Wonder                                             IZ
• Kentucky Wonder                                             (USA – Old Homestead)
• Masterpiece                                                      
• The Prince                                                         IZ

Bean, Broad Bean

Longpod varieties

• Exhibition Longpod (early)                               G
• Dwarf Early Magazan              MGG
• Magazan or Longpod Early                                WTGHN
• Prolific Longpod (early)                                     IZ
• Seville Longpod                                                 PG

 Windsor varieties

• Early Giant Windsor (broad type)                     PG
• Early White Windsor                                        WTG
• Great Windsor (maincrop) (broad type)          IZ
• Green Windsor                                                 WTGHN
• Improved Broad Windsor                                              
• Windsor                                                             WTGHN

 Bean, Runner Bean

•  Best of All                                                         IZ
• Princeps                                                             VGD
• Prizewinner                                                       MGG
• Scarlet Emperor                                                 MGG
• Streamline                                                          MGG
• Sutton’s Exhibition                                             WTG
• Rajah (white seeded)                                         UWC

 Brussels Sprouts  

• Aigburth                                                             WTGHN
• Clucas’ Favourite                                               PG
• Darlington                                                          MGG
• Evesham Special                                                 PG
• Fillbasket                                                           
• Harrisons XXX                                                  VGD
• Matchless                                                           PG
• The Wroxton                                                   

 Broccoli

• Calabrese                                                           WVG
• Clucas’ June                                                       WTG
• Eastertide (spring v.)                                          MGG              
• Extra Early Roscoff (autumn v.)                         PG
• Late Feltham                                                      PG
• Leamington  (spring v.)                                     
• Late Queen (spring v.)                                      
• May Queen                                                       
• Methuen’s Late June                                          MGG
• Methuen’s  June                                                 MGG
• Michaelmas White (autumn v.)                         MGG
• Christmas Purple Sprouting                               HN
• Early Purple Sprouting                                      
• Late Purple Sprouting                                        VGD
• Roscoff No.1 & No. 2  (winter v.)                    PG
• Roscoff No. 3 & No. 4  (early spring  v.)          PG
• Roscoff No. 5  (late spring  v.)                          PG
• Snow’s Winter White  (autumn v.)
• Veitch’s Self Protecting (autumn v.)G
• Walcheren  (autumn v.)                           
• Whitsuntide (spring v.)                                      MGG
• Winter White                                                    MGG
• Winter Queen                                                   MGG

Beetroot

Long-rooted varieties

• Cheltenham Green Top                                   
• Perfection                                                          PG
• Sutton’s Blood-Red                                            MGG

Globe-rooted varieties

• Crimson Globe                                                  VGD
• Detroit                                                               IZ
• Empire Globe                                                    MGG
• Crimson Ball                                                    PG

Cabbage

• January King (winter v.)                                     MGG
• Baby Roundhead                                                VGD
• Christmas Drumhead (winter v.)
• Clucas’ Roundhead                                            WTG
• Durham Early                                                     AGG1/1, WTG
• Early Market                                                      WTG
• Early Offenham                                              
• Ellam’s Early                                                      MGG
• Enfield Market                                                   IZ
• Flower of Spring                                                MGG
• Harbinger (spring v.)                                          WTG, PG, IZ, MGG
• Imperial                                                              IZ
• Non – Pareil                                                      WTG
• Primo                                                                
• Tender and True                                               IZ
• Utility                                                                 MGG
• Velocity (first Spring sowing)                            MGG
• Winnigstadt                                                   MGG
• Portugal Cabbage – Couve Tronchuda             MGG
• Chinese Cabbage – Pe Tsai                               ?

NB Savoy cabbages such as Ormskirk Late (pictured) will be listed later.

Carrot

• Shorthorn for shallow soil,  small or stump-rooted variety.
• Intermediate for medium depth
• Long, long-rooted for deep soil, exhibition variety

Varieties

•  Altrincham                              (Long)              MGG
• Chantenay                               (Intermediate)    MGG
• Champion Scarlet Horn (early)                         IZ                    
• Early Gem                               (Small)               
• Early Horn                              ?                          WTG
• Early Nantes                           (Small)                MGG
• Early Shorthorn (forcing)        (Small)                PG
• James Intermediate                 (Intermediate)MGG
• James Scarlet Intermediate     (Intermediate)    PG
• Long Surrey                             (Long)                 PG
• Long Red Surrey                     (Long)                 MGG
• New Red Intermediate (maincrop) (Intermed)      IZ
• Scarlet Horn                           (Small)                MGG
• Scarlet Intermediate (maincrop)  (Intermediate)    WTG
• St. Valary / Valery                   (Long)                 MGG

Cauliflower

• All The Year Round                                        MGG
• Autumn  
• Early Chantenay                                                 VGD
• Early Erfurt                                                         MGG
• Early Giant                                                         PG
• Early London                                                      VGD, MGG
• Early Market                                                      VGD
• Early Six Weeks                                                 WTGHN
• Early Snowball                                                   VGD, PG, MGG
• Eclipse (autumn v.)                                             MGG
• Walcheren                                                         WTGHN

Celery

Endive

• Moss Curled  (early)                                          WTGHN, PG, MGG
• Green Curled                                                    WTGHN, VGD
• Batavian (winter)                                               WTGHN, MGG
• Batavian Broad-leaved

Initials in CAPITALS e.g. MGG, WTGHN are our codes for which book we found the reference, so ignore these.
And here my ‘vegetable love’ was exhausted for one typing session.         Look out for more of the list and updates in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile you can check which of  these 1940s varieties are still available by searching the seed catalogues online or request a catalogue  from  Suttons Seeds, Mr. Fothergills, D.T. Brown, Unwins, Thompson & Morgan, The Real Seed Company and many others. 

Plant Conservation Day (on May 18th 2010) www.plantconservationday.org  has lots more information about ways of getting involved  http://bgci.org/plantconservationday. We’ll be planting some wartime varieties, heirloom or heritage varieties of vegetables and flowers in the wartime garden and try to save the seeds. 

You can find out more about heirloom varieties and local varieties of plants and seeds for your area at: 

•  the Postcode Plants Database (produced by Flora for Fauna) www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/plants-fungi/postcode-plants
• Heritage Seed Library (HDRA) run by Garden Organic http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk
• http://www.squidoo.com/heritageseeds  for Seed Savers exchnage, The Real Seed Catalogue etc, Emma Cooper’s  Alternative Kitchen Garden blog http://coopette.com/akg . and other lists for the UK and around the world

 

Happy digging! Contact us at the World War Zoo gardens project via comments on this blog …

Look out for Saturday 22^nd May 2010,  Biodiversity Day with mnay events in BIAZA zoos, aquariums and other sites. We’ll be posting more on this during the week.

Wartime gardening 1940 style, Plant Conservation Day 2010 and International Year of Biodiversity in the World War Zoo gardens at Newquay Zoo

Get involved and ‘Do One Thing’ for wildlife this year

Sunflowers for wild bird seed (and feeding wartime chickens) World War Zoo garden, Newquay Zoo, 2009 (now the site of a new walkthrough Madagascan aviary)

We can all do something positive for biodiversity this year. At the World War Zoo gardens project here at Newquay Zoo, we   like many groups such as BIAZA, Wildfowl and Wetland Trust, RHS and Wildlife Trusts are supporting the UK’s 2010 International Year of Biodiversity campaign to Do One Thing.  Find out more at www.biodiversityislife.net 

Resolve to do one thing this year  for biodiversity.  If you’re not sure what to do, we have some suggestions below. And when you do it, tell your friends and family about it to encourage them to do something too. If you have a twitter account, don’t forget to follow @iybuk too and tell others what you’re doing. 

We will be promoting 2010 International Year of Biodiversity and also Plant Conservation Day (on May 18th 2010)  our second World War Zoo wartime garden weekend at Newquay Zoo 1 to 3 May 2010. This weekend also launches our Plant Hunters trail celebrating  plant hunters like the Lobb brothers, wartime secret agent and ageing plant hunter Frank Kingdon-Ward and the exotic plants they brought back from daring exploits around the world. Our vegetable and flower gardens are a strange mixture of plants and varieties from the local area and from all over the world. 

Heirloom varieties and 'Vera Lynn' commemorative varieties of Sweet peas are one of the flowers brightening up the World War Zoo wartime garden that will be sown this year.

Plant Conservation Day (on May 18th 2010) www.plantconservationday.org  has lots more information about ways of getting involved  http://bgci.org/plantconservationday. We’ll be planting some wartime varieties, heirloom or heritage varieties of vegetables and flowers in the wartime garden and try to save the seeds. 

You can find out more about heirloom varieties and local varieties of plants and seeds for your area at: 

•  the Postcode Plants Database (produced by Flora for Fauna) www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/plants-fungi/postcode-plants
• Heritage Seed Library (HDRA) run by Garden Organic http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk
• http://www.squidoo.com/heritageseeds  for Seed Savers exchnage, The Real Seed Catalogue etc, Emma Cooper’s  Alternative Kitchen Garden blog http://coopette.com/akg . and other lists for the UK and around the world

There are many suggestions of things we can all do for International Year of Biodiversity at http://www.biodiversityislife.net/?q=do-one-thing and from the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust website www.wwt.org.uk and Wild about gardens website www.wildaboutgardens.org.uk  : 

1. plant some wildlife friendly mixtures of flowers
2. save your seeds or plant heirloom varieties
3. build a wildlife pond in the garden 
4. install a water butt and connect the down pipe from the gutter to a water butt and connect the overflow of the water butt to the pond or garden
5. become a member of conservation organisation
6. volunteer at a conservation organisation
7. adopt an animal (or vegetable  – see www.gardenorganic.org.uk)
8. remember wildlife or conservation organisations in your will
9. Don’t mow your lawn – an untidy garden encourages wildlife (we like this one a lot)
10. Dig up your lawn (like we did with one at Newquay Zoo) and plant veg or apply for an allotment from your local council, or turn over some of your garden to growing your own.