Women Authors From England

"It is not possible to make sweeping statements about what will or will not grow in clay soil, because there are so many different types of clay. Some are much stickier and more difficult to handle than others; clay that has been made easier to handle by the addition of will grow most plants. I don't believe there is any soil that will not grow something."

"believed in manuring with a very generous hand and woe betide any little plant of mine that grew nearby, as it would surely die of suffocation under the great gallops of manure that were plastered round every rose. All the manure we could get was devoted to the roses and s."

"Frances is one of the main team of ' presenters, alongside . She has written several books and is a familiar face at garden and literary festivals. The publication of her first children’s book, How to Grow a Garden, and her forthcoming appearance as a guest speaker at Toby’s Garden Festival in May is why I’m calling her today. How to Grow a Garden is a colourful, hardback book which takes young readers on a journey through different gardens, from veg plots to rows and meadows, s, and various exotic gardens. Each garden is beautifully illustrated by Charlotte Ager and is packed with vibrant and fun plants, animals and insects. Throughout, Frances has added little descriptions and facts and each garden has a seasonal to-do list of inspiring and creative ideas for children (which adults will certainly enjoy doing as well)."

"... I had a very traditional start – as an apprentice at 19, my job was to pick up dog poo and make the head gardener tea. Then at the I learned about conservation, and . Slowly, cogs move and you end up miles away from where you began, without really noticing that it’s happened. ... After school I worked at and did a foundation degree in art. Then a gardening apprenticeship came up and I made a snap decision. I walked around the garden with the head gardener and just thought, oh, this is amazing, I want to work here. I realised I like being in soil and muddy and the creativity that doesn’t involve sitting at a desk."

"Even the canny invader William the Conqueror can be thought to have contributed to the total of our plant list. When he came to build what we now know as the s, he preferred use material with which he was already acquainted rather than stone from unknown English quarries, so the walls of castles like and were built from stone imported from the . Incidental to its main purpose, the stone itself carried the seeds of a double invasion — seeds of two plants we think of as being most quintessentially English. The first was the , and the second was . Both were seen blooming on the stone walls of in France, so the pretty little delicate pink which is used in the breeding of nearly all of our border pinks is the result of ."

"Trees can be record breakers: they can be one of the oldest living s in the world: Californian specimens of ', the Wellingonia or Big Tree, are believed to be at least 4,000 years old. They can also be the largest form of life: a which grows in in Mexico — and which, incidentally, is about 2,000 years old — has a circumference measuring 54 s (178) and is 40 metres (130ft) high. Its weight is estimated to be about 500 s."

", is a lovely plant that provides so very much in the garden or in a row, offering a safe haven and bountiful feast for nesting birds and s. It's also an incredibly useful plant for us. The edible spring leaves are great in salads, and the autumn berries, or haws, can be used in lots of dishes and drinks."

"Evelyn ... wrote the first (and only) bestseller on : was published in 1664 and addressed and the shortage of . ... "We had better be without gold than without timber," Evelyn wrote, because without trees there would be no iron and glass industry, no fires to warm houses in winter, nor a navy to protect the shores of England. Timber was, as Maggie Campbell-Culver points out, the oil of the 17th century, and the shortage of it created similar anxieties about fuel, manufacturing and transport as threats to oil production do today. Sylva was a response to these fears, encouraging the reader to plant trees as an act of patriotic duty. ... A Passion for Trees is beautifully illustrated with paintings and sumptuous botanical drawings. But the use of explanatory extensive "text boxes" (some are four pages long) interrupts the narrative. As with her first book The Origin of Plants, Campbell-Culver is at her strongest and most convincing when she delves into the lives of the trees, although both Evelyn himself and the age in which he lived remain elusive throughout the book."

"There are some roses that always flower late, not just in a freak year. I always enjoy November roses, whether it is 'Madame Abel Chatenay', that wreathes the dining-room window, or , who pops up from behind the barton wall at a time when I thought all good roses had gone to sleep."

"The key consideration when is the , because you need to choose species that can cope with having their roots so restricted. The soil in a small container also tends to dry out and lose its quicker than that in a large one. So unless you have a lot of time and love to give to your containers, it's worth choosing fairly low-maintenance plants that can cope with dry, nutrient-poor, small spaces, or plants that are extremely slow grown. Plants such as s, s and other , ' and other and even many herbs such as , and can cope with slightly drier, nutrient-poor conditions and, dare I say, neglect from us growers!"

"s are particularly valuable for the winter and one in particular, , is a good all-the-year plant for a place in the garden that is in constant use. I noticed a very happy and very natural treatment of a bed next to the porch of a front door."

"If the flower spikes are kept cut the makes good cover because the roots are strong and the beetroot-colored leaves quite big. The plants should be put fairly close together and soon colonise if all the spikes are not removed very quickly."

"Thousands of , , , , , and are being planted, to create habitats of indigenous – of tree cover and open grazing. A flickered along the prickly spine of the new fence built to separate the sheep from the trees. Further on, beyond a bank of glacial , the infant disappeared behind a drystone wall above what was once a but has become a dry ochre basin of ' grasses. Canalised in a previous century, the Mint is to be re-meandered to its original course through the valley bottom, and Dub Ings will become a tarn once more. Like the new trees, this work – done in partnership with and another local farm – is intended to lessen the effects of flooding on communities further downstream; the memory of is never far away."

"The remains unambiguous, but still the fox hunts continue. Since the ban came into force more than ten years ago, I've seen — or more often heard — a number of hunts in progress. I've heard hounds in tracking rapidly across the open ground of the higher s, their baying echoing around the valley. Or down by the , men with s, turning to see who was driving past. Up here in , the hunt has always been on foot, but for all the lack of pomp and , and money, I still loathe it."

"... in Spring we can hold our own with the best. in variety nestle in the s; s dance in radiant glory by the thousand along the banks of streams, and stray into field and woodland; s life their delicate faces at the heel of every hedge, and carpet all the shaws; s are not lacking in the meadows, and the early purple, spotted, green-winged, meadow, and marsh s, spread their lavenders and purples among the lush grass, where the evasive peachy-mauve of adds its shimmer of delicate colour."

"... was born. Merchant, traveller, philanthropist and author, his business took him to Spain and , and his journeyings furnished matter for sundry tomes when he retired with a fortune. But it is a public benefactor, particularly to the seafaring-folk, that his name is chiefly remembered, and and are his best memorials. Yet, when the very titles of his seventy publications are lost altogether, and his efforts to promote s and redress the trying lot of the ers are alike forgotten, one fact may keep his memory green—he was the first man to walk the streets of London under an umbrella! Another local philanthropist was , the originator of s, and the queer little house where the cobbler lived is still in Highbury Street. Not far off was the . It was afterwards removed to the now about on High Street."

"In my despair—for it had arrived at that, so futile seemed my killings—I worried experts for some slugicide that would not kill my plants, but only their destroyers; and finally one day in I poured my woes out in the sympathetic ear of . The Director of the has need to be most patient if many others question him as I have done. HIs answer in this case was prompt, direct, and simple—"A and a ." So then the war on s really began."

"As well as the human remains, the jawbone of a was unearthed at . Lynx became extinct in the UK about 1,800 years ago, but I found it exciting to think of these beautiful, lithe creatures roaming over my home landscape. There were the bones of a 7,000-year-old that had most likely been dragged up to the cave by an animal. And a short distance away, in fact just an arrow's flight from Kirkhead Tower, is , the place where the last wolf in England was reputedly killed. And although this idea might be fanciful (how on earth would anyone know where the very last wolf died anyway?), there's evidence of wolves right here on the doorstep. had been roaming northern Britain over 1,300 years ago and their bones were found in the cavern. They had been gnawed by a large predator. The most likely candidate? Wolf."

"In 1992, almost 2,000 of the world's leading scientists presented us with another way of looking at the world. In , they informed us that the current trajectory of was unsustainable. ... ... Some of us see what is happening but have little ability to act. Others see something else entirely because maintaining the juggernaut of the and is the priority. For them, the does little but get in the way."

"... "wild service" ... is an ethos ... giving back to nature — but also, obviously, it's the name of . ... it's, after all, the tree of generosity and hospitality that used to be grown on the grounds of s, because beer was . So when you see a pub called "The Chequers", it's named for this wonderful ..."

"Water reveals how small our lives are in time as well as space. Less than 0.025% of the water on our planet exists in all the world’s rivers, lakes, marshes and biological s combined. A river is water’s chance to flicker and dance under the sun before it returns to the deep, dark ocean, is frozen in or stored away underground, sometimes for hundreds of millennia. Flowing water moves mountains, it hollows and builds land. It provides the medium in which the chemistry of life recycles and reorganises energy and matter."

"19TH JULY SACRED GROVES Ancient Rome The Roman term ' (plural luci) referes to a class of woodland with special religious significance. Luci took the form of sacred groves or clearings, often featuring special trees and springs. They were places of celebration, communion and ritual offering. Well-documented examples include in (now in ) and (now the city of ). The was celebrated within such groves on 19th and 20th July."

"We speak of as if rock were the epitome of durability. It isn’t. Where rock meets water, it is water that wins in time, every time, and there are few places in England where this is more obviously true than the . Hollowness is ubiquitous here; a landscape riddled with caves and pots and channels. You can even watch them forming in many rivers and becks, where below most drops, you can find circular dishings in the rock, some shallow, some deep, some containing pebbles conscripted to the river’s work; swirling and scouring, day and night. ... It’s not necessarily the speed, volume or power of a river that wins, but its relentlessness. It needs no breath, no sleep, no pause to stretch or shake. And in time, without fuss or ceremony, it will take heat from flesh, life from limb, tree from bank, rock from channel, mountain from continent. It will hollow the land. And it demands total respect."

"In 1949 Grace and Ian Telfer, an member, decided to mark in an attempt to follow their movements. Though s are resident on the , nothing was known about them outside the breeding season. The first seals were tagged in 1951, and within fifteen days the first marked seal was recovered in Norway. This was ground breaking research as no one had realised how far the Grey Seals were traveling."

"On 3rd December, 1958, ten calves were killed on the North Wamses, a small island some three miles off the north coast. This was the first licensed killing of grey seals during the breeding season since the passing of the 1932 Grey Seals Protection Act and it was intended to be the first stage of an experimental annual cull of 300 calves, recommended as a means of reducing the grey seal population of the and thereby lessening the damage done by seals to the salmon fishing industry."

"These youngsters appear to have little fear of man for Jack Shiel tells the story of how, on a day in late autumn when they were line fishing for , a young kept helping himself to the best fish while the men were taking the others from the hooks."

"To-day, although numbers of s are still taken—in addition to the some 30,000 yearlings of the are killed each year—the decrease in the number of whales, and the increasing demand for edible oil has meant a growing emphasis on the exploitation of seals for oil."

"You will think us very unfortunate in having just reached Nice to see it captured; and you will, no doubt, be anxious to learn particulars. During our residence in Switzerland we heard rumours of an approaching war between France and his Sardinian Majesty; and as many of the Emigrants who resorted last winter to Nice were in fact Republicans sent to disseminate revolutionary principles among the People, we dreaded the event of such a war; especially as we had recently witnessed the misery of Savoy under the existing government, and too well knew the specious offers made by France to every Nation who complained either of real or imaginary grievances."

"The is most appropriately named, for, in addition to the pensive drooping appearance of its branches, it is common to see little drops of water, which stand like fallen tears upon the leaves. The willow will grow in any but a dry soil, but most delights and best thrives in the immediate neighbourhood of water."

"Bess Kent is an enigmatic figure. We know she wrote voluminous letters, in which she laid her heart bare, but few have survived. We know that she wrote at least three books — two about flowers and trees and one for children, and that she planned to write another — but we know little about how she conducted her research, or how long these books took her to write. In the late 1810s and early 1820s she attempted to wean herself off , but there is little to indicate when she first developed this addiction. She made at least one suicide attempt and threatened to make others, but the circumstances surrounding them are a matter of conjecture."

"... queen Elizabeth ... is said to have planted an with her own hand at , in which she was brought up when an infant. It went always by her name, and I remember it a stately flourishing tree, except that the top was decayed. It stood at the upper end of , near where the turnpike now is, and was boundary of the parish on the north side. It was felled, to the great regret of the neighbourhood, on the 11th of November 1745, and sold for a , by lord of the manor."

"is thought to make the best , and its soot is a good lamp-black for printers' ink. The leaves are good fodder for horses, kine, sheep, and goats; and the seeds are the favourite food of the ."

"The , from the esculent quality of the s, which, in times of scarcity, are frequently eaten by the poor in the south of France, ground, and made into bread: some eat them fresh like nuts; they are sweet, and very different from our s. This Oak was cultivated by in 1739."

"says that the gum-resin, called ', is supposed to be the incense formerly used by the ancients in their religious ceremonies, though not the substance known by that name in shops. It is much employed by the Roman Catholics in their chapels, for similar uses: when burned, it diffuses a very fragrant smell. This olibanum, or true frankincense, has been supposed to be the produce of the , but that plant does not afford any resin. The olibanum now sold in the shops is the produce of the ."

"The is an evergreen shrub, with fine glossy leaves: the honey-breathing blossoms, as Evelyn terms them, come out in May; they are numerous, but very small, and are very grateful to bees. It is a native of Europe and , and was introduced into this country in 1629."

"I had written a book and I wanted to do something more in not just writing it but trying to put something in place to help people not go through the same thing I did so I had some emails out to certain organizations"

"The aftermath of my husband’s suicide starting with the night that he was found when I went to the house with the police there was just a nightmare. The first night there was just — Instead of being able to concentrate on what was happening with my husband"

"It is important to note that, as the colors were chosen with care, there were colors not chosen with just as much, if not more, deliberate care as a way of showing her acceptance of me."

"My gift has no green where green usually goes. The colorless parts of this gift speak volumes to me."

"I can’t look at them or think about them without being moved to tears. There are lots of good emotions in those tears. I can’t name them all, but I feel all the feels."

"I was working at a public school and I felt like I was back in middle school again with the social environment and at the end of the year, I wasn’t asked back because they said I didn’t fit in. There was nothing wrong with my teaching. I had letters from all my parents saying that everything was fine. The other teachers just thought that I didn’t fit in. So that was when I went for a formal diagnosis."

"All Europe, and the temperate parts of the vast , abound with . The , which is little regarded in warmer climates, is used for a variety of purposes in the bleak and barren , and in other northern countries. ... In the it affords a dye. en cloth boiled in water, and afterwards in a strong decoction made from the green tops and flowers of this plant, becomes of a beautiful orange-colour. Brettius relates, that a kind of ale brewed from these young tops was much used by the : and it is said to be still an ingredient in the beer in some of the Western Isles. In many parts of Great Britain s are made of this Heath; and it is an excellent fuel. The flowers are either a kind of rose-colour slightly tinged with purple, or they are quite white. Bees collect a great quantity of honey from them."

"I did more classes around the county and it just grew"

"The wonderful thing is that most of my class have been coming to me for at least 30 years, if not 40 years."

"It is important for us to find a form of exercise we enjoy so that we keep doing it."

"The advent of the internet, internet shopping and mobile phones all mean that we can run our lives without moving around as much as we used to. I really don’t know where it will end unless people take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing."

"It went from talking about how to make the most of yourself to actually doing some exercise"

"When the credit crunch came, it seemed like a perfect storm."

"No one diet is more popular than another. It is all down to personal preference."

"because I'm from a family where food was a very important and enticing temptation. But I didn't enjoy it much at home. Only when I left I enjoyed it, when it wasn't prepared by my mother. I became a compulsive eater – it was gluttony. Before I was born again."