Wheel Meet Again…

No matter where you are in the earth gardeners all need the same tools ( with some variations ) so as to keep our gardens gorgeous . Secateurs , spades , trowel , fork hoes and dibber are all invaluable in this clash with nature .

In an jobless moment this workweek ( it is August , most of my client are lie around on a beach somewhere and it was more or less torpid week ) I bump myself stargaze : you know how it is sometimes . You bet up from crafting a blog for Fine Gardening or sketch a planting dodge , you gaze out of the windowpane at a grazing pigeon and the mind wanders . It jounce ( or at least mine does ) from cheeseflower to international politics to the coming last Ashes Test against Australia to that odd cross on my black suede cloth shoe to the shape of a particularly downlike cumulonimbus to piglets to medlar etc etc .

On this occasion I dart very quickly from Grace Kelly ( I have recently watch To Catch a stealer in which Ms Kelly looks implausibly marvellous – as does Cary Grant ) to wheelbarrows .

The wheelbarrow is one of man ’s greatest innovation . One day our ancestors are struggling under a load of rocks , the next some bright light has stuck a bike on a plank and life is abruptly simpler . I have no musical theme which bright Muriel Sarah Spark first had the theme but whoever he was , I salute him . It is one of those thoroughgoing invention that can not be bettered – like knives , the underpant , brick , the egg , the polka loony toons two-piece or ( if I may give back to a late oneirism ) the scruff of Grace Kelly ’s neck .

I own four : one that works , one with a puncture , one with a big hole in the bottom which is perfect for glade weed out of pool ( drainage ) and one with no bicycle . Nothing fancy just bog - standard builders merchant types but without them my gardening would be much hard . The first representative of the lawn cart is in Chengdu , China in a paint tomb mural dated ( with uncanny preciseness ) to 118AD . Although we must assume that it was much earlier that somebody first adapted the well used two wheeled pushcart into something more maneuverable – specially in narrow blank space . A cranny address Tseng Min - Hsung in 1200 AD boasted that “ pathways which are as winding as the bowels of a sheep will not defeat the wheelbarrow . ”

As with all the cleverest inventions it is ridiculously simple and the only improvement made to the design over the past yoke of thousand years are to make them lighter and to put on a pneumatic tire . So Hurrah for the barrow .

Here are some interesting facts about wheelbarrows :

Garden designer Tony Smith made a garden of wheelbarrows at this yr ’s Chelsea Flower Show – it celebrated the hidden labour and talent behind the big name clothes designer and nurseries . The unsung Hero of Alexandria . ( Picture byFrickesphotography ) He also did wheelbarrow installations at Heathrow Airport .

The papistical emperor butterfly , Elagabalus , used wheelbarrow to transport fair sex around the court . This transport had petty to do with horticulture or constructor . Elagabalus was one of the racier Roman Emperors . He was married five times ( once to a Vestal Virgin and once to a charioteer ) , in addition he slept with a all-encompassing pick of the remaining population and undervalue the denarius . He was finally assassinated and chucked in the River Tiber in 222 . He was eighteen when he cash in one’s chips so you could appreciate his inscription to drunken revelry and the usefulness of get a wheelbarrow to ferry people around . If they had had to walk he might not have had metre to get married so often .

The wheelbarrow has appeared in a painting by Salvador Dali(Pantheon Formed By Twisted Wheelbarrows-1951 )

In China they rigged sails to their lawn cart so as to take vantage of a following wind – not so good for profile .

wheelbarrow make excellent planter : at flower shows there is often a challenger ( usually for chidren ) for the best planted barrow . In garden its very portability crap it useful – here is a filmwe made forintoGardensof Ava Milne , our child prodigy , planting a herbaceous plant garden .

That is likely enough , otherwise you will begin to think that all Brits are weird .

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