Caroline Ball's Blog
October 21, 2020
Apple Day!
What a difference a year makes! This time last year weekends in October were being devoted to all things apple, from bobbing to cider tasting, apple cake competitions to orchard walks, and fruit nurseries the length of the country were hosting open days with tasting and advice.
Ah me, we can sigh, yet another casualty of the pandemic. But apples are still ripening and being harvested, so maybe we just have to think of new ways of celebrating. I’m going to seek out varieties I’ve never tried before - never even heard of (I recently enjoyed a Reinette d’Ananas at The Newt in Somerset). Check out farm shops and local markets, talk to apple-growing neighbours (who will almost always have a surplus). Swap views and news on your favourite social media - and let’s have ourselves a merry little tasting or two.
I’ve been talking this week to Sarah Wilson, she of the award-winning Roots and All podcasts. In her latest podcast we discuss heritage apples, and I learnt she is enthusiastically planning an orchard of her local varieties.
And an exciting piece of personal news: Heritage Apples has been shortlisted for the Garden Media Guild’s Peter Seagrove Practical Book of the Year! Winners announced next month … watch this space!
Ah me, we can sigh, yet another casualty of the pandemic. But apples are still ripening and being harvested, so maybe we just have to think of new ways of celebrating. I’m going to seek out varieties I’ve never tried before - never even heard of (I recently enjoyed a Reinette d’Ananas at The Newt in Somerset). Check out farm shops and local markets, talk to apple-growing neighbours (who will almost always have a surplus). Swap views and news on your favourite social media - and let’s have ourselves a merry little tasting or two.
I’ve been talking this week to Sarah Wilson, she of the award-winning Roots and All podcasts. In her latest podcast we discuss heritage apples, and I learnt she is enthusiastically planning an orchard of her local varieties.
And an exciting piece of personal news: Heritage Apples has been shortlisted for the Garden Media Guild’s Peter Seagrove Practical Book of the Year! Winners announced next month … watch this space!
February 18, 2020
Of Pearmains and Pippins, with thanks to Edith and Alice
I'm often asked where the beautiful illustrations in
Heritage Apples
come from. Did I paint them myself? If only! But no, they are the work of two Victorian women and come from a treasure of the Bodleian Library in Oxford called The Herefordshire Pomona. Herefordshire has always been one of Britain's traditional fruit-growing counties, and its pomona came about in a curious way.
In the late 19th century, members of the Woolhope Naturalists Field Club, a small rural club dedicated to exploring and studying the natural world, noticed on their rambles that many of the county's orchards were neglected or abandoned. They also came across varieties that were never seen in local greengrocers. So they decided to do something about it.
To promote British apples and pears, in particular local varieties that were in danger of being lost, the club held competitive shows and encouraged members to plant fruit trees ... and then came up with a more ambitious idea: they would publish their own pomona. (Pomonas, finely illustrated fruit books named after the Roman goddess of gardens and orchards, were popular in the nineteenth century.)
It was quite a project for a provincial club with limited funds, but their enthusiasm - and the expertise and drive of its editor, Dr Henry Bull - prevailed. The first volume, published in 1876, consisted of just six plates of illustrations with accompanying text, but Dr Bull had got the bit between his teeth now, and over the course of the following nine years, like Topsy 'it just growed'. Further volumes ranged far beyond the initial aspiration of a county record, and the finished Pomona included 270 apples and 162 pears.
Each fruit (except one) was faithfully painted from life by Dr Bull's daughter Edith, and another talented watercolourist, Alice Ellis. A joy of the Pomona is that, instead of 'translating' the images into etchings for print, the originals were sent to Brussels where the printer employed what was then the quite new colour printing system of chromolithography (a mouthful to say, but plenty of websites will explain it!) As a result none of the subtlety or glow of the young ladies' watercolours has been lost.
Producing The Herefordshire Pomona was an enormous undertaking, but the result was, and remains, a horticultural and artistic treasure. Only 600 copies were ever printed and many have since been lost, so it's a rarity you won't find propping up a shelf in every other secondhand bookshop!
The Woolhope Naturalists Field Club, by the way, still thrives: https://www.woolhopeclub.org.uk
In the late 19th century, members of the Woolhope Naturalists Field Club, a small rural club dedicated to exploring and studying the natural world, noticed on their rambles that many of the county's orchards were neglected or abandoned. They also came across varieties that were never seen in local greengrocers. So they decided to do something about it.
To promote British apples and pears, in particular local varieties that were in danger of being lost, the club held competitive shows and encouraged members to plant fruit trees ... and then came up with a more ambitious idea: they would publish their own pomona. (Pomonas, finely illustrated fruit books named after the Roman goddess of gardens and orchards, were popular in the nineteenth century.)
It was quite a project for a provincial club with limited funds, but their enthusiasm - and the expertise and drive of its editor, Dr Henry Bull - prevailed. The first volume, published in 1876, consisted of just six plates of illustrations with accompanying text, but Dr Bull had got the bit between his teeth now, and over the course of the following nine years, like Topsy 'it just growed'. Further volumes ranged far beyond the initial aspiration of a county record, and the finished Pomona included 270 apples and 162 pears.
Each fruit (except one) was faithfully painted from life by Dr Bull's daughter Edith, and another talented watercolourist, Alice Ellis. A joy of the Pomona is that, instead of 'translating' the images into etchings for print, the originals were sent to Brussels where the printer employed what was then the quite new colour printing system of chromolithography (a mouthful to say, but plenty of websites will explain it!) As a result none of the subtlety or glow of the young ladies' watercolours has been lost.
Producing The Herefordshire Pomona was an enormous undertaking, but the result was, and remains, a horticultural and artistic treasure. Only 600 copies were ever printed and many have since been lost, so it's a rarity you won't find propping up a shelf in every other secondhand bookshop!
The Woolhope Naturalists Field Club, by the way, still thrives: https://www.woolhopeclub.org.uk
