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This year (2025), I spent my summer holiday down south. While I was in London, a friend, knowing that my current historical interest is the 18^th century, took me to see two 18^th century houses administered by English Heritage. The one that particularly caught my fancy was Marble Hill House, a small Palladian villa in Twickenham. It’s a little gem. The proportions of the house are so beautiful, that it didn’t really matter that the original contents were sold with the house in 1824, and that most of the furniture, pictures etc. displayed there today have been replaced from other sources. Nor did it matter that the gardens are still in process of restoration, and the lawns at the front and back were burnt brown by the heat wave this year, because the setting on the north bank of the Thames is so lovely.

Marble Hill House* was a villa built on what was then the outskirts of London, so that its owner, attached to the royal court, could enjoy fresh country air and scenery from time to time. Henrietta Howard was a Woman of the Bedchamber to Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II. Henrietta was also George's mistress, both before and for some time after he succeeded his father as King of England and Elector of Hanover. The villa was in the neo-Palladian style, popular in Britain from the early to the mid-18^th century. This was based on the work of Andrea Palladio, a 16^th century Italian architect. He was inspired by the work of the Roman architect Vitruvius and by the proportion and ornament used in the buildings of ancient Rome. Neo-Palladian buildings were symmetrical, one side being a mirror image of the other. They often had fronts similar to a classical temple, with a triangular pediment over the main entrance, supported by columns or pilasters, and large tripartite Venetian windows (a central large arched window with smaller rectangular windows either side). The principles of Palladianism could be applied to small houses as well as to what were virtually palaces. While the exteriors of the buildings were simple and plain, the interiors, which also contained classical features, might be richly decorated. The houses usually had gardens carefully designed to complement them.

Marble Hill is a small square symmetrical building with four floors. It has five bays across the front and three across the side; the centre three bays on the north front project slightly. The north front faced the road and originally had a forecourt; this was where visitors arrived by carriage. It has a triangular pediment supported by four pilasters with simple Ionic capitals. The south front has no pilasters but is very similar. It faces the river (visitors might arrive by boat) and overlooked the garden. The garden included a flower garden, a greenhouse, a grotto, a bowling alley, and an ice house; also lawns, woods and walks. On the east side there was originally an L-shaped service wing which no longer exists.

The interior had some lovely features. I can't go into detail about all of them, but the ground floor included a hall which opened onto the south front and was based on the Roman atrium. This was the entry to a Roman house, open to the sky in the centre with a square pool for rainwater below the opening. This pool is represented at Marble Hill by four columns surrounding a square marked by floor tiles in the centre of the room. A beautifully-carved mahogany staircase (unfortunately, the mahogany was probably the result of slave-labour) leads up to the first floor where the most important rooms were located. In the ‘Great Room’, music, dancing and other entertainments took place. Henrietta Howard was known to be a very intelligent, well-educated and cultured woman and she had a wide circle of talented friends. The large marble fireplace in the Great Room, with its classical decoration, is really beautiful. Her bedroom, which was also decorated with columns and pilasters, would have been open to visitors when she had guests, although this was where she normally slept and dressed. The second floor, as well as three more bedrooms, contains a non-Palladian feature, the gallery, which stretches from the north to the south sides of the house. Galleries were traditional in English houses, providing display space for paintings and other art objects, and a place to exercise in bad weather.  The final floor was the attics, probably where servants slept. A stone staircase connected all four floors and was used mainly by servants.  The contents of the house, either recorded or on display, illustrate the interests and pursuits of the English aristocracy in the 18^th century – excellent paintings on the walls; tea-drinking and collections of porcelain used for serving it; elaborate dining; chinoiserie – there is a fine lacquer screen in the Great Room.

London was by far the largest city in Britain during the 18^th century, the location of Parliament and the royal court. So what was going on in the rest of the country, while royal courtiers built Palladian retreats along the Thames and collected Chinese porcelain? What about Scotland, united with England since 1707? Just over 500 miles to the north of London, Orkney and Shetland did not host a royal court, none of the 18^th century monarchs ever paid a visit, and there was no resident aristocracy. George Douglas, 13^th earl of Morton, who was earl of Orkney and Lord of Zetland, did not live there. But the much smaller houses built by the local gentry (lairds) in the 18^th century often had Palladian features and were expensively furnished. Unfortunately it isn't possible for the public to visit either of the following two examples at the moment, but they are well-documented.

The Hall of Clestrain in Orphir, Orkney, was built in 1768 by Patrick Honeyman, the laird of Graemsay. This estate was the largest in Orkney after the bishopric and earldom estates. Although small, the house is in the Palladian style and said to be ‘of exceptional quality’.  It was a square stone building, symmetrical in design, linked to low pavilions at each side by connecting walls (only one survives).These pavilions are usually drawn in two-dimensional reconstructions as if they were level with the front elevation of the house, but in fact they were level with the back and formed two sides of a courtyard of which the rear, north wall of the house formed the third. There are three bays to each elevation and three floors, if you include the attic and basement floors. Probably the reception rooms were on the middle floor, with bedrooms above and service/family rooms in the basement, reached via an internal stone staircase. Entrance to the house was by a graceful stair into the middle floor through the projecting central bay, which was probably topped by a pediment. It faces south, and had a walled garden, like most gentry houses in the Northern Isles. The laird’s family later moved to the mainland of Scotland and left the Hall of Clestrain to their factor or agent. This was John Rae, whose son, also John Rae, was the famous Arctic explorer. The house is a category A listed building. It had become derelict, although many important Georgian interior details apparently survive.  The building is now in process of restoration with a view to opening it to the public.

The 18^th century lairds** of Orkney were known as the ‘Merchant Lairds’ since they used  the goods such as grain, butter and kelp, which were paid to them as rent by their tenants, for trading purposes and became wealthy on the profits. They also benefited from rent paid in the form of free labour, useful in the kelp industry. Kelp was one of the most profitable commodities in the 18^th century. It was an alkaline product made by burning seaweed in pits on the beaches, and Patrick Honeyman was engaged in the kelp trade. A 1764 inventory made when another wealthy laird, James Baikie, 6^th Laird of Tankerness, died, listed expensive household goods: walnut and mahogany furniture, gilded mirrors, brass candlesticks, clocks, writing desks, and easy chairs. There was table ware of silver, pewter, delftware and stoneware, and large stores of linen napkins and tablecloths. The cellars held 10 gross of wine bottles and 14 ale casks. Robert Baikie, the 7^th laird, owned a fine library, paid for out of his kelp profits. It is reasonable to suppose that the Hall of Clestrain was furnished in similar style.

And at the farthest northern point of the British Isles, the island of Unst in Shetland, a small Palladian house was built in 1775 by Thomas Mouat of Garth, the son of a laird. Belmont House, now a Category A listed building with an important garden, was occupied until the mid-20^th century, when the family sold it and it fell into serious disrepair. It was restored over the years between 1996 and 2010 by local groups, and is now in private ownership. Like Marble Hill, it has a lovely view, facing south over an inlet of the sea dividing Unst from Yell.  It is two storeys high, with attics and basements, and two pavilions at the sides linked to it by connecting walls which surrounded the forecourt. To the north at the back of the house was a farmhouse. To the south were three walled gardens and a park, and an avenue leading down to the shore. Many of the garden features such as walls, remains of a summerhouse, footpaths etc. are still visible. It sounds absolutely lovely.

Perhaps Hall of Clestrain and Belmont House are not large enough to count as ‘stately homes’, but they are beautiful examples of a particularly graceful style of architecture which spread from south to north of the British Isles in the 18th century.

*Marble Hill English Heritage Guidebook 2023 Dr Megan Leyland & Emily Parker;

** Profit Not Loss The Story of the Baikies of Tankerness 2003 Bryce Wilson

When I first heard about Hügelkultur, I thought it was the most extraordinary method of growing vegetables I had ever come across, although a useful idea if your problem is not enough depth of soil.  But as I recently scanned idly through many a screen, my eye was caught by a reference to floating vegetable gardens. It brought back a very vague memory of my first-year university studies. Fifty-five years ago, when I was doing my degree in prehistory, we had to start by looking at an overview of the prehistory and (some of) the history of the whole world. I remembered hearing about the floating vegetable gardens of the Aztecs, a useful idea if your problem is growing food for a city surrounded by water.

The Aztec empire flourished in central Mexico during the 14^th, 15^th and early 16^th centuries CE. Their capital city was Tenochtitlan, built on islands in Lake Texcoco, now the site of Mexico City.  They were a warlike people, but their science, art and architecture were also impressive; they had a written language, and an interesting if somewhat bloodthirsty belief system. The Aztecs kept track of the year using two separate calendars, one for ritual and one for agricultural purposes, which together formed a 52-year cycle. The Central American civilizations did not use wheels except for spindle whorls and children’s’ toys. They had neither potter’s wheels nor wheeled vehicles, perhaps because of the terrain or the lack of suitable draft animals.  They also didn’t have guns, so their sophisticated society was brought to an end by the arrival of foreign invaders, the Spanish Conquistadors, who did.

The Aztecs were migrants to the Valley of Mexico from the north. When they arrived there in the early 14^th century the area was already inhabited. Their capital was built on a small island in a swamp because this site was uninhabited and easily defended.  As the population grew, the chinampas were their solution to providing the city with food. Chinampas were not really floating gardens. They were artificial islands, created by building wattle fences on the lake bed to create small square enclosures which were then filled in with dredged-up lake mud, brush and waterweeds from the surrounding waterways, all rich in organic material. Trees, especially willows, were planted around the edges of the islets to increase stability, and the surrounding waterways were kept clear, allowing canoes to pass among the gardens, and maintaining a constant supply of water to the gardens. The fertile soil thus produced was extremely productive.  The Aztec farmers grew, among other vegetables and herbs, maize, beans, squash, tomatoes, chilli peppers and amaranth (a plant which produces tiny nutritious seeds which can be used like cereal grains). 

Chinampas did not compete very well with modern industrial methods of farming and global trade, and gradually almost ceased cultivation. They recently became important again in supplying Mexico City with fresh food during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Suddenly markets were closed, borders were closed and supply chains all over the world were disrupted. Surviving chinampas became the best source of fresh vegetables for the population of Mexico City (now 20 million people). They have been suggested as a good example of sustainable agriculture. And the chinampas of Xochimilco, south of Mexico City, are today recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  

The term ‘floating vegetable garden’ is often used rather loosely to signify a vegetable plot, man-made or otherwise, surrounded by water. The chinampas are not actually floating. The island of Madeira is sometimes referred to as a ‘floating garden’ because of its lush vegetation. In France, the Hortillonages are a labyrinth of tiny islets accessible only by a network of canals, which once supplied the town of Amiens with fruit and vegetables.  However, there are parts of the world today where vegetables are actually grown on floating constructions made of locally-available plant material.

In the Indian sub-continent, there are farmers who cultivate vegetable gardens that are free-floating. The practice was traditional in Bangladesh in areas which are often flooded for long periods during the monsoon. The long thin vegetable beds are constructed on a base of water hyacinth stems, bamboo, and rice stalks, beaten into mats and covered with silt, chopped water hyacinth, manure, and soil. The beds are anchored in place with bamboo poles but can rise and fall with changing water levels. The vegetables best suited to these floating gardens, which are usually around half a metre thick, are shallow-rooted leafy greens such as spinach, amaranth, beans, okra, tomatoes, aubergines, chillies, gourds, and herbs such as mint, ginger and coriander.  They can be up to 55m long, although shorter lengths are commoner; usually 10 – 15m long by 1m wide. Unlike the chinampas, they last for months rather than centuries, and need to be rebuilt every flood season.

The beds are cheap and easy to build, very fertile, and as they gradually decompose, produce excellent compost. They are considered to increase food security in areas prone to disastrous floods, and also something which gives status and economic benefits to women, who often do the cultivation. Furthermore, water hyacinth* is a highly invasive species from South America, which needs to be cleared from waterways anyway, as it interferes with fishing and water transport and allows mosquitos to breed, so this is an added benefit.  Bangladesh is very low-lying and is likely to be seriously affected by climate change and rising sea-levels, so floating vegetable gardens may become even more useful in the future.

Floating vegetable gardens are also used in parts of India, such as Dal Lake. Dal Lake is a large shallow freshwater lake in the city of Srinagar, Kashmir, in India. The lake is a noted tourist attraction, with a beautiful setting in the Himalayas, lined with gardens, parks and boulevards, and dotted with houseboats. Its floating vegetable gardens supply the city with fresh food. Reeds and bulrushes are woven together to make large mats which are dried out for several years before being covered with a layer of mud and planted with vegetables. These gardens can be moved around to various parts of the lake. Another kind is built on the marshy edges of the lake and is not moved, although it still floats. These gardens can be up to 2m in thickness, and can grow root crops such as carrots, turnips and radishes, as well as the same vegetables grown in Bangladesh: tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, aubergines, beans, gourds, chillies, melons and pumpkins and herbs. They can be 45m in length, and 3m wide. Unfortunately, the gardens are currently badly affected by climate change, pollution, tourism, and reduction in the area and depth of the lake. Government policies of resettling the farmers elsewhere, and the reluctance of younger people to work for the low profit margins involved also threaten the survival of this form of cultivation on Dal Lake.

Other countries in Southeast Asia, such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar, which have a tradition of houses built on stilts over a lake, also use floating gardens. Further afield, I have found a reference to floating vegetable patches in Southern Sudan.

All of the floating gardens described above are simple to build and are constructed of locally available materials. They are cultivated using organic methods, basically lake mud and animal dung rather than industrially-produced fertiliser.  They can provide a living for landless farmers, and empower village women, who can do much of the work. They usually supply food to a nearby city, so they are distributed locally and food miles are minimal. But cultivating a garden while up to your waist in water and mud, and the low profit margins involved, are not to the taste of many young people today. Floating gardens are labour-intensive – you can’t use a tractor or a harvesting machine on a raft. Pollution from sewage and industrial waste is becoming a problem in many areas. It takes extreme poverty, or a crisis such as the Covid pandemic or serious flooding to make them an attractive option in the modern world. But one day, we may need to think again.

* Incidentally, the sale of water hyacinth is now prohibited in the UK, and although it is not illegal to have some in a garden pond, releasing it into the wild is strictly forbidden. It does not usually grow well here because it does not tolerate winter temperatures below freezing, but has been noticed thriving in a Nottinghamshire park. Shall we think about global warming at this point….?

“From the bank of the Tweed to St Andrews I have never seen a single tree, which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present century. Now and then about a gentleman’s house stands a small plantation, which in Scots is called a policy, but of these there are few, and these few all very young. The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown. There is no tree for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger, and the whole country is extended in uniform nakedness…”

This bleak landscape was described by Samuel Johnson in the 18^th century in his “A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland” 1775 (p.8). At the end of the Ice Age, Scotland was largely covered with temperate forest, but a change to a cooler wetter climate and the effects of agriculture, as well as felling trees for timber, charcoal, etc. deforested much of the country. The same is true for the Orkney Islands. It is believed that most of the woodland in Orkney had been cut down by the end of the Bronze Age to clear land for farming. Grazing by animals and the strong winds for which Orkney is famous prevented regeneration.  By the medieval period, Orkney, and Scotland as a whole, were importing timber for building houses, ships, vehicles etc. from Norway.

In Orkney, a tiny patch of native woodland survives at Berriedale on the island of Hoy, together with a few even tinier scraps in the same part of that island, such as Burn of Quoy, mentioned in Stromness Museum's ‘Woodland Walks'. The main native trees in Orkney are Downy Birch; hazel; aspen; rowan; various willow species: Grey willow, Eared willow, Tea-leaved willow, Dwarf willow, Creeping willow and juniper. Wild rose and wild honeysuckle form part of the understorey.

There are a few small plantations of trees around the gentry houses (early modern onwards) in Orkney, perhaps what Johnson meant by a ‘policy’. They are usually sheltered by stone walls. These trees are mostly sycamores, a native of central, eastern and southern Europe, which is believed to have been introduced into Britain either by the Romans or during the Tudor period. Sycamore does well in Orkney because of its tolerance of the salt-laden winds. Although it’s a real nuisance if your garden is anywhere near a sycamore tree because it produces quantities of winged seeds that germinate vigorously anywhere they land.

Several small areas of conifers were planted by the Forestry Commission on Hoy in 1954, as part of a government program for re-afforestation of suitable areas. This program especially favoured species useful for timber, such as the fast-growing Sitka spruce. According to MTT Philips, one of the foresters who worked on the this project, there were four small plantations at Fea, Lodge, White Glen and Lyrawa. Looking at the OS map, there seems to be a fifth, at the extreme north end of the island, called Hoy Forest. The small plantations are mostly still standing,  although the only one I am able to get close to, at Fea, has suffered quite a lot of wind damage around the edges.

More recently, there have been more efforts to plant small areas of mixed trees in Orkney rather than coniferous plantations. Orkney Islands Council, various community projects, and a number of private individuals have done so. I visited a very good one during the Open Garden Festival this year, Laura’s Wood in South Ronaldsay. Several of my friends, who have large enough gardens, have raised quite successful mini-woods within a few decades, although they don't tend to use all-native species. Usually fast-growing willows are used as a windbreak to start them off. I understand that the tiny saplings may need to have wire netting collars to protect them from rabbits.

In urban areas of the Scottish mainland, ‘Tiny Forests’, or ‘Wee Forests’ as they are now called in Scotland, are being established using the Miyawaki method. Akira Miyawaki was a Japanese botanist and plant ecologist, who developed a method for growing very small areas of forest very rapidly. The Miyawaki method of creating tiny forests involves careful preparation of an area of soil, usually about the size of a tennis court, (approximately 24 x 11 metres) and then planting native species of trees from the normal canopy layer, lower storey and forest floor, all at the same time. The seeds are planted at very high densities. This is supposed to replicate what happens in a natural forest when a canopy tree falls and opens up a clearing. Competition for the light means that the saplings all grow very fast, competing for light, and natural selection thins out the forest. It apparently results in a tiny area of dense woodland, a native forest in miniature, and it only takes decades rather than centuries. It is very important to plant species which are native to the area – even within the UK, there are variations in habitat.

The small size (you can make them as small as 5m²) makes them suitable for small areas of waste ground in densely populated urban environments, where they have a noticeable effect on temperatures and air quality. The ‘tiny forests’ also provide opportunities for children and adult volunteers in big cities to learn about forests, while providing free labour for things like watering and weeding while the seedlings grow big enough to fend for themselves. And they attract sponsorship from businesses, who can use them for corporate away-days and bonding sessions and so on. An organisation called Earthwatch is co-ordinating the planting of many of these ‘wee forests’ in Scotland. There is one in our nearest large urban centre, Aberdeen, Woodside Wee Forest.

Lockdown generated a lot of social media advice about how important it is for our mental health to connect regularly with nature, how beneficial ‘forest bathing’ is and so on.  But it’s getting more and more difficult to find any forest to bathe in. This planet is grossly overpopulated. These tiny patches of woodland can never offer the silence and solitude of a real forest, nor the atmosphere which generated folk stories of witches and wolves and beautiful princesses sleeping for centuries in enchanted castles. You cannot be alone in the same way with the silence, the solitude, the sunlight filtering through the leaves of the tall trees far above, the rustling of small animals in the undergrowth. They do not seem to be places where you can just wander; you need a clipboard or an organised project. But perhaps they can cool down our mega-cities and give our grandchildren something to look at instead of concrete. Which can’t be bad.

I have just had another happy holiday in a Hanseatic League town. In 2018, I had a wonderful trip to Lübeck, ‘Queen of the Hanseatic League’.  I made a resolution that someday I would visit Lüneburg, which supplied much of the salt traded by the League. Covid and a few other things got in the way, but I finally made it this year. Why did I never hear of the Hanse until I moved to Orkney? In spite of their importance in medieval Europe, I don’t remember them being mentioned during my school history lessons, nor during the years I spent working on medieval and early modern history. I was in my sixties when I finally came across the Hanse.

The Hanseatic League was a confederation of trading towns in North Germany from the 12th to the 17th centuries. During that period the Hanse dominated trade around the North Sea and the Baltic, and their operations extended as far as Southern Europe. It was originally formed in 1158 in Lübeck as a union of individual merchants. The first Hansetag (Hanseatic council meeting) was in 1356 and the last in 1669, the official beginning and end of the League. The merchants of the Hanseatic towns became so powerful that they were able to throw off the rule of the local rulers and answered directly to the Holy Roman Emperor.  They had ‘kontors’ or trading centres in towns in many European countries, the most important being Bergen in Norway; London in England; Bruges in the Low Countries; and Novgorod in Russia.  Such was the power of the Hanse, who used trade embargoes and even outright warfare to enforce their demands, that these enclaves were given special privileges by the local rulers.

One of the Hanse’s main trade items was salt fish. This was an essential commodity at the time, because the Catholic Church required its members to avoid meat on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and the whole of Lent and Advent. Fish was usually substituted. For those living inland, or during seasons when fishing was not possible, this meant fish preserved by salting and drying. There were, after all, no freezers or tins in those days.

Shetland was a major supplier of the fish. Merchants from the Hanseatic cities of Bremen and Hamburg are known to have traded regularly with Shetland for stockfish (dried cod and ling). Records show that in 1539 more than 20% of the stockfish declared to the customs at Bremen came from Shetland*. The tiny stone ‘bod’ (booth) at Symbister on Whalsay in Shetland was built for this trade, as were those at Hillswick on the Shetland mainland and Greenwell’s Booth on Unst. These merchants were supposed to trade through the Bergen kontor, but as time went on, a lot of them dealt direct.  Shetland is easy to visit from Orkney, and I have made several short trips there

The trade in salt was just as important as the fish itself, and salt was so valuable that it was sometimes referred to as ‘white gold’. At Lüneburg, 71km to the south of Lübeck, rock salt was obtained from a geological formation known as a ‘salt dome’. An underground salt-water spring was exploited from the 12^th century or earlier. The strong brine was directed through wooden pipes to boiling houses where it was put into large shallow lead trays with fires underneath them, and boiled until the water had evaporated. Wood for the fires was imported via the river Ilmenau, a tributary of the Elbe, which runs through Lüneburg. The work was continuous, 24 hours per day, and the town was noticeable for the clouds of steam and smoke rising from the salt works.  It seems highly likely that the salt so produced would have been contaminated by lead, and therefore so would the fish it was used to preserve. Might this have been another important source of lead poisoning in medieval Europe, besides lead-glazed pottery? Food contamination is not a new problem.

The salt was initially transported from Lüneburg to the Baltic port at Lübeck along a 100km track known as the ‘Old Salt Road’ which connected the two towns. In the late 14^th century, a small canal was built connecting tributaries of the rivers Elbe and Trave, which allowed the salt to be transported all the way from Lüneburg to Lübeck in boats.

The Hanse usually used cogs, small clinker-built ships with a single mast and a single square sail. They had flat bottoms which allowed them to settle on a level at low tide on a beach or harbour. Their squat shape allowed them to carry more cargo than the Viking vessels they replaced during the course of the 13^th century. They also had a rudder mounted on a stern-post rather than a steering oar, which made them easier to steer. The well-preserved remains of a 14^th century Hanseatic cog were recovered from the mud during dredging work on the river Weser near Bremen in 1962. The preserved timbers are now on display in the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven.

Lüneburg was the main town of the principality of Lüneburg, a territory of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1247 the Lüneburg town charter was confirmed, giving privileges to the burghers or citizens. However, in 1371 the citizens of the town expelled their territorial sovereign and destroyed his castle on the Kalkburg. In 1412 the first Hansetag of Lüneburg was celebrated in the town. The salt masters, from the small number of merchant families who leased the salt works, came to dominate the town. They grew extremely rich, and were able to afford beautiful imported glass and pottery, silver cups and salt-cellars; and to build magnificent tall brick houses and public buildings in the ‘Brick Gothic’ style.

Brick Gothic is slightly simplified Gothic architecture, with tall windows, high pointed arches, rib vaulting and flying buttresses, but built in brick. It was common during the medieval/Hanseatic period in northern and central Europe in the Baltic area where there is little building stone available. The buildings are a beautiful warm red colour, and in Lüneburg were decorated with glazed bricks, roof furniture etc. as well as some expensive imported stone. I saw some excellent glazed brick in the town museum. The tall churches are fiendishly difficult to photograph, though, because you can’t get far enough away from them in the narrow streets.

By the 17^th century, the power of the Hanse was declining. The rule of the merchants was replaced by the rulers of new territorial states and new trade routes, for example with India and America. The last Hansetag was in 1669.  Lüneburg was once again ruled by a local prince, and the town, having lost much of its salt trade, declined. The extraction of salt continued, however, and this has left a lasting legacy. So much salt was extracted, especially during the 19^th century, that the land above the dome, on which part of the town had been built, started to subside and is still doing so. Many buildings in the area have collapsed or had to be demolished. The salt works was finally closed entirely in 1980. They now only produce very small amounts of salt for the town spa, and to sell to tourists.

(*ref. panel text, Pier House Museum, Symbister, Whalsay)

I first came across the term “hügelkultur” during an internet search on a gardening topic. This time, for once, my interest wasn’t sparked by a book. Basically, it involves growing vegetables on a compost heap with a base formed by a pile of logs. The idea is an interesting one, although I should stress that I have no personal knowledge of how well it works, as I have never seen one in action and it isn’t suitable for my own garden. Although frequently referred to as an ‘ancient technique’ in Europe there seem to be no references to either documentary or archaeological evidence for hugelkultur earlier than 1962. If anybody has any such references, I would be interested to hear them.

The word ‘hügelkultur’ is German for ‘mound cultivation’. It refers to building a raised bed on a base of logs, filled in with small twigs and bark, and covered with layers of straw, compost, grass clippings, dead leaves, chicken bedding etc and finally topsoil, in which you plant your vegetables. You can either build it freestanding i.e. completely above ground level, or sunk in a trench, or partly sunk. Some are gently sloping, some have almost vertical sides. As the logs rot and the various layers of leaves etc. compost down, a rich soil is produced. The porous logs retain moisture efficiently so the bed needs less watering than conventional beds, but it doesn’t become waterlogged. The slowly decomposing organic matter provides a slow release supply of nutrients. It doesn’t need digging over, so the soil structure remains undisturbed and it is expected to be rich in soil bacteria, fungal mycelia etc. It’s a good way to recycle organic waste into compost, and it is very much part of the permaculture movement, in that it is supposed to take care of itself and produce food for years. 

It is generally admitted to have some disadvantages. A certain amount of heavy labour is needed to set up, digging up the turf and moving logs into position, and you need to leave it for a year or so to become established. It doesn’t last forever and needs to be rebuilt entirely after five or six years. The bed slowly subsides as the compost material rots down, so planting fruit trees and bushes on top is not really practical. You need a source of logs (bark chippings alone won’t do) and a good deal of compostable materials to start it off with. Areas like Orkney and Shetland, with very few trees would have a problem. I am not sure that driftwood well-soaked with salt, or conifers full of resin, would really make a good base for a compost heap.  Holes will appear as the underlying logs rot down, which will need to be filled in with small stuff. It is also said to be an attractive habitat for rats. And you need a large enough plot of land. There is something scientific about wood needing extra nitrogen as it starts to rot; I have no idea whether this is really likely to have a significant effect in a garden bed or whether it is of purely academic interest.

Not everybody supports the method. An article written by an urban horticulturist and associate professor at Washington State University argues that ordinary raised beds are a better option and that the logs would be better used on the surface, as ‘nurse logs’ for wildlife, standing around the garden, or made into chippings for mulches.

An interesting side effect of my researches on this particular topic was that it brought my attention to the way my preferred search engine works and its AI summary is produced. My background research this time relied entirely on the internet, since the method doesn’t appear in any of the books I have got hold of. At one point I noticed that the sites that usually appear when I search on gardening topics, such as the RHS, Henry Doubleday, and various sites run by universities or botanic gardens, did not come up this time. Even Wikipedia was only on the second page. Instead, I got hardly anything except blogs from ‘alternative’ groups or individuals. I have no objection to druids and some of them did look practical, but I like to have a more orthodox point of view as well. When I did find Wiki and some of the blogs dealing with the disadvantages of hügelkultur, they stated that there have been no properly-designed scientific studies on whether it actually works.

I asked about how AI works at present, and it turns out that it relies on the sites which come up most frequently and which attract the attention of search engines most efficiently. It has no way at the moment to assess the reliability or the academic standards of its sources. The AI designers are well aware of this, and you can find out about it if you ask, but it is not immediately obvious to the casual user, or at least not to one of my age. In some ways this can be a good way of avoiding censorship on the internet, and it hardly matters if you are building a raised bed on top of a log pile, but it does mean that I would not like to bet on how well this technique works without trying it myself or visiting a garden where it has been used.

So, am I going to try building myself a hügel? No. It sounds as if it might be suitable for some environments, but Orkney has (a) an abundance of fertile agricultural soil and (b) a serious lack of trees. And I only have a small garden. I shall stick to tiny raised beds and containers and composting my kitchen waste. But I would like to see one in action.