Week Ten

There's only one more week left in this internship with Kew.  Wow!  That's hard to believe.  This week was a short week because there was a "bank holiday" across the country on Monday.  I spent the weekend touring some really fantastic Hosta collections near Wokingham and visiting with some friends from Tennessee.

Tuesday
Tuesday we were back to work.  As you know, Monday is normally our edging day, and the grass had gotten a bit shaggy.  Shelley decided to have the whole lot of us tackle edging in the order beds and grass garden and get it done that morning.  Our crew was back up to seven people, because we got a new apprentice and Martin returned from paternity leave.

Daisy and I were hard at work digging
Hemerocallis in the peony border

It was a bit rainy that day, and both of our normal volunteers called in because of the poor weather.  We finished by lunch time, and then the skies opened up and began to really "chuck it down".  There just wasn't enough room for all of us to be sharpening tools in the shed that afternoon, so Daisy and I spent the rest of the day working on internship assignments from the School of Horticulture computer lab.

Wednesday
Nearly all of us spent the entire day Wednesday working in the peony beds.  The peony beds are large mixed borders that contain a great deal of Paeonia between the order beds and the woodland garden.  We were doing what Shelley calls a "general tidy", which means we were weeding, deadheading, and removing dead foliage and spent biennials.

Leadership Experience
Shelley used the time to encourage Beth, one of the horticulture students, to get some personnel management experience.  Beth oversaw Daisy and me for a while, which involved explaining the tasks we were needed to do, how to do them, and why they needed to be done.  My understanding was this is a normal part of the students' work experience placement, so they're not only learning how to be horticulturalists, but also leaders in horticulture.  Beth did a great job!

Dealing with Daylilies
While Daisy and I were working under Beth, I overheard Shelley and India discussing the layout of an adjacent bed.  It was interesting to hear them work through the changes they would be making to improve a few spots.  There was one section that had a huge patch of Hemerocallis flava (1998-2335, MAFA).  India and I had recently spent some time removing the dead foliage and pulling the old flower stalks.

Kew staff decided to add some
splashes of color and texture at the
corners of this bed by removing
daylily  and planting Heuchera

Shelley and India decided the area would be more attractive if there were something a bit lower and more evergreen towards the front rather than just daylilies.  Shelley later explained that something perennial and evergreen, like Heuchera, would also help control some of the soil erosion in the bed.  She pointed out the plants that they had decided to remove, gave some guidance on the method, and let us get to it.

As someone who trained in horticulture in Knoxville, Tennessee, I didn't feel that I needed a great deal of oversight on this task.  If there's one thing this Tennessee girl knows how to do, it's digging and dividing Hemerocallis.  The H. 'Stella D'Oro' craze hit our area pretty hard, which made these plants wildly popular in residential and commercial landscapes.

But Shelley wouldn't be doing her job if she just let two interns loose in the garden without more specific direction, so she walked us through the following steps.  First we removed all the old, strappy foliage so that digging would be cleaner and easier.  However, these plants would be planted elsewhere at Kew, so the second flush of new growth needed to be kept intact as much as possible.  Then we had to use our forks to maneuver the plants loose of the soil.  Shelley suggested we work a circle around the plant before digging up so that we wouldn't break the shaft.  We set the plants in a secluded area near the tool shed, then leveled the soil in the beds and swept the paths.

If there's one thing this Tennessee
girl knows how to do, it's digging
and dividing daylilies.  These will
be planted elsewhere at Kew.

Thursday
Daisy and I spent the day continuing to tidy up around the order beds.  There were some plants that had "gone over", which means they were done for the year.  We cut back perennials and pulled up annuals.  There was a large Euphorbia that had completely flopped.  We cut it back to some new basal growth, and it may pluck up a bit before the end of the season. Euphorbia sap is a skin irritant, so Daisy and I wore gloves and handled the trimmed branches with care.

Friday
Tomorrow, the whole cohort of interns is heading to Wakehurst Place for the entire day.  Unfortunately I won't be able to attend.  The date of the trip had to be rescheduled, and I had already gotten nonrefundable or exchangeable train tickets to see the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh that day.  Kate and Shelley made arrangements for me to go last week, but I'm still a little bummed that I'm missing out on seeing Wakehurst with the rest of the group.


Thanks for reading, and check back to read what happens the LAST week of my internship with Kew.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel welcome to leave a comment or send me an email.

To see more photos from this week, be sure to check out the album "Week Ten" on the Plante on Plants Facebook page.  "Likes", shares and comments are appreciated. 

This week's British treat a cup of English breakfast tea and a Hobnob biscuit. You just can't get more English than that...

Believe it or not, this is also the first cup of tea I've had in England.  Consumed reluctantly at the insistence of a coworker, this was actually quite good.  I still prefer coffee though.

All photos were taken by Amanda Plante at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew unless otherwise stated in the caption.

Sources:

• The Plant List website
• The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew website and staff

The Great Baked Good Debate, UK vs US

The very first week of my internship with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, one of the horticulture students asked me to name one iconic dish from the Southeast United States.  Without missing a step I said, "Biscuits n' gravy."  Blank faces.  Then I was asked twice to confirm that yes, those two words are "biscuit" and "gravy".  The interest in the conversation increased.  I was quizzed about the gravy and whether it means the same thing in Tennessee as it does in London.  When I described the gravy as made from sausage grease, flour, milk and pepper, curiosity turned into open disgust.  I didn't understand. 

Just look at this and tell me that it's not a cookie.
That looks nothing like a proper biscuit!

That week I picked up some McVitie's Digestive Biscuits for my first "British treat of the week".  I basically inhaled the package without pausing to wonder why the word "biscuit" was on a package of cookies.  

It was another week or so before someone explained that biscuits in the UK are completely different from the ones I grew up with.  That opened a whole Pandora's box, and made everyone involved question, not only what culinary qualities constitute a biscuit versus a cookie, but also in defining scones, crackers and cakes.  I expected some cultural differences, but this was a bit more than I had anticipated.  I mean, these folks actually thought that I ate cookies with sausage gravy.

American Biscuits n' Gravy

Last week, I brought in some fresh, homemade sausage biscuits and gravy before a hardy display section meeting.  The biscuits were so-so because people use different metrics for baking here (weight vs. volume), and I didn't think to pack any measuring cups.  They were warm, buttery, and okay overall.  There was only one biscuit left over, and when I threw the sad thing away at afternoon tea it was as hard as a hockey puck.  

The gravy was definitely the finest sausage gravy I've ever made.  Good flavor, color, consistency.  I had worried at first that nobody would eat it if it went gray and unappetizing.  Thankfully it was a nice white with bits of sausage and pepper floating around.

People kept calling these biscuits "scones".  No.
It's biscuits n' gravy, not scones n' gravy.

But probably the most popular part of the dish was the sausage patties.  Most of the sausages you see over here are in casings, so several people stopped to ask me what they were eating.  The idea of ground sausage formed into a patty is a bit too foreign for some folks to wrap their heads around.  The sausage was gone first though.

I had also prepared some sausage biscuits.  You know, like the ones you pick up from the McDonald's drive-thru for $1 when you overslept and didn't have time to make breakfast.  One person remarked that it looked like a hamburger, and because it resembles a burger it shouldn't be eaten without "salad" (toppings) and "tomato sauce" (ketchup).

As I was washing the dishes, I overheard a somewhat heated conversation from the dining area.  There were two folks, each with a biscuit, arguing over the pronunciation of scone.  One pronounced it skh-ON (rhymes with John) and the other skh-OWN (rhymes with Joan).  When I took the dish away to wash, one stopped me and verified that I had brought in the food.  When I affirmed, they asked me to clear it up.  "How do you pronounce the name of this? Skh-ON or skh-OWN?"  I paused, then replied, "Neither.  These are biscuits."  One kind of rolled their eyes, the other scoffed and threw up their hands, and as they walked away I think I heard someone mutter something about Americans.

But is a scone a biscuit?

UT students argue that scones are not equivalent
to biscuits.  Rather, scones are a type of biscuit.

When the University of Tennessee's Glorious Gardens of England mini-term group came to visit, I picked up some scones for the students to enjoy on the bus ride from Kew to Hampton Court Palace.  I also packed some clotted cream and jam, and told a few students about the controversy about which should be applied first (see end of "Week Three").  Apparently they were tasty, and I hope that they weren't awfully stale. 

A couple days later, we were on the bus to Sissinghurst, when one of the students thanked me for the treat.  "Those were good!" she said, "What kind of biscuits were they?"  Here we go again... I thought.  So the Tennesseans decided that scones are a type of sweet biscuit, but not all biscuits are scones.  Okay, I can go with that.  Except my fellow intern Daisy explained to me that there can be quite bland or savory.  That confused the issue again. 

And a biscuit... is... a cookie?

As soon as the UT students walked through the entrance to Kew and gathered by Victoria Gate entrance, I informed them that they had arrived just after morning tea.  In celebration of that, they each got to try a chocolate covered Hobnob biscuit.  After all, I'd had cake and cookies at every other morning tea that week.  Why should that day be any different?  

In the UK, "biscuits" may be
dunked in tea or coffee.  This is
coffee -- not tea.  There are just
some things I will not do.

I informed the group that Hobnobs and Digestive biscuits are pretty good on their own, but they're transcendent when dunked in coffee.  Some people I work with dunk them in tea, but as a red-blooded American there are some things I just won't do.  

There were murmurs of enjoyment, then I heard something to the effect of, "These cookies are good!"  No.  Here in the UK, these cookies are biscuits.  Yet they still have "cookies".  So what is a cookie?  There are varying definitions.  One Kew student believes that cookies are soft and biscuits are hard.  Okay, I can accept that.  Another friend of mine said that if they're hard, but still have chocolate chips in them, then they're cookies.  

...

This is all a bit too much for me to wrap my head around, which is why the matter deserved a post unto itself.  I'm opening the discussion up to let the people decide.  What do you think?  What constitutes a scone, biscuit, or cookie?  

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel welcome to leave a comment or send me an email.

To see more photos from this week, be sure to check out the album "The Great Baked Good Debate" on the Plante on Plants Facebook page.  "Likes", shares and comments are appreciated.

All photos were taken by Amanda Plante at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew unless otherwise stated in the caption.

Don't even get me started on crumpets...