When I worked in a garden centre I asked my employer, What did a public school education do for you ? and what good was learning Latin to you in this modern time. His reply came back, well the three R's everybody needs: but Latin, it has helped me compose the garden centre catalogue, how? from the Latin names I can first list the correct botanical name of a tree or shrub, then I can give it it's common name and a description of its distinguishing characteristics. Ummm I thought, great but what use is that to me?
Hence the following tale
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| The new tropical glasshouse at Latvia's Botanical Gardens |
Those of you who are friends on Facebook or have read previous blogs will know one of our greatest delights to us here in Upes Iela is our garden apart from when it under 2 foot of snow there is always something to see. New life emerging from the frozen earth,some plant breaking into new life or no matter how large or small a flower be the color and shape always are a joy to see.
However at the moment the garden does look a little sad as the frost has wreaked havoc with the plants,and we sadly lack some autumn colour. with this in mind Valerie and myself headed off to the Latvian National Botanic Garden in Salaspils where from spring to autumn there is a plant market once a month and just the place to buy some plants to give us the color we want.
Having met the gardens director on a previous visit and being given two free passes ,we were on to a winner. The gardens themselves had a tent with a small selection of plants for sale, they were almost sold out by the time we arrived but we managed to buy a nice Acer in full autumn colour and a Ptelea trifolia ( common hop tree)
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| Our new Acer |
Now at this point I must say that my opening comments all come into play now
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| Hamamelis mollis witch hazel |
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| Quercus coccinea scarlet oak |
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| Ptelea. Hop tree |
One phone call and we had our answer, yes, if we would like to go to the other side of the gardens and find Dzintra she would show us and if we liked it we could buy one.Great!!! how do we get there? not sure the answer came but try the back entrance someone might know. OK we were on the right track or were we? When I need to find somewhere my first plan is ask, (can't be doing with one of these satnav things.) God put a tongue in my head and it's there to use.The first person we saw put us straight, take the second turn on the right ummm is that a hard road or dirt track, I'm not sure she smiled back Don't worry I can always ask! and off we went only to find ourselves in the car park, close to the new greenhouse complex which opened this year. One of the staff is sure to speak english I'll ask there. A nice lady greeted me on my entry,a sort of meet and greet like Asda or Tesco's. Do you speak english I confidently asked, no she replied and disappeared into an office and made a phone call. At this point I must confess I am a bit like my mum she would talk to anyone, when on holiday when our children were small we would leave her on a park bench while we went to get the makings of a picnic or fish and chips only to return to find her chatting to some complete stranger. Any way I digress back to the plot, while I stood and waited I saw a young family sitting in the greenhouse. It's a pretty good bet that most young people speak some english so I asked, sure enough and so I now had a translator, by this time more staff had come and one young lady spoke excellent english and so we were moving along nicely at this point. But did she know Dzintra? no she didn't but she would take us to find her ,,problem solved! well not quite she knew where well roughly, but she had only just started working for the botanical garden , but in the administration block ,,so she said she would be happy to meet some of her colleagues. So off we headed.
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| Quercus rubra Red oak |
Spotting someone working amongst some container grown plants, could this be the elusive Dzintra??? of course not,, nothing could be that simple,but she did show us some Quercus, but "Dzintra knows where the best ones are, let's go and find her" she collected her bicycle and rode off across the grass while we hurriedly got in the car and took off round the track after her finally to find this lady { Dzintra}who knew where the best red oaks were, and she did !! At this point we were like kids in a sweet shop before us were many varieties of trees and shrubs all growing in the open ground, choose which one you want and we will dig it up for you, well this one and this one and have you got any Hamamelis mollis (Witch hazel) yes just over there just choose one, by this time the 2 ladies had spades at the ready and were lifting our plants all of which had to fit in the car, and the largest oak was about 8ft tall with a rootball almost 2ft across and weighed a ton, oh yes we also found another Quercus coccinea (scarlet oak) and a low growing Euonymus atropurpurea (spindleberry) all of which are now planted around 13 Upes Iela with the promise of rich autumn colours for years to come.
In all we met 10 of the nicest folk you would wish to meet, nothing was to much trouble all because as BT used to say "It's good to talk" The moral of this story is, I am glad I listened to my boss all those years ago and learned the latin names of plants as when talking to Dzintra and her colleagues we had a common language with which we could communicate.
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