It’s a growing fascination gardening has something for everyone these days, from the youngsters keen to help the environment by growing their own, to the seasoned garden-lover with a passion for colour and style.
Gardens have changed for most of us since the days when our dads grew serried ranks of veg and our mums pruned traditional roses. But in an age when space, both physical and spiritual, is at a premium, a garden can offer both.
A garden can change your life – for the better. Helen Brown talked to The Courier’s new gardening guru, John Stoa, about the secrets of the garden.
John Stoa is one of those lucky people who has more than one talent. And one, over the years, has grown into and inspired the other.
John started his working life as an apprentice in Dundee’s Parks Department, then as scientific assistant at the Scottish Crop Research Institute just outside the city, spending much of his subsequent working life in horticulture and parks and forestry management.
At the same time, his hobby, painting, grew and developed in parallel, his canvases often inspired not only by the landscapes round about him but by his garden, the floral shapes, colours and textures he created in his own home-from-home.
Largely self-taught, he sold his first painting in 1980 and continued to experiment, develop and sell his work but in 1992, when redundancy hit, he took the plunge and became an artist full-time.
He enjoyed and continues to enjoy considerable success this week, he is showing work at his home studio as part of Dundee’s Westfest and still finds huge inspiration in the garden he and his partner Anna started to create almost 10 years ago.
He has also become known and recognised as an expert in several horticultural areas but it’s his practical yet imaginative approach that makes his ideas accessible and understandable to would-be gardeners of all ages and abilities.
He is sharing his discoveries and his passion with Courier readers in his gardening column as part of Tuesday’s regular C2 lifestyle section.
John explained, “I left school in 1959 and went to the Parks Department in Dundee at the time when the manager was Sandy Dow.
“He was a real horticulturalist with a great love of flowers the town was full of flowers back then!
“I studied for my apprenticeship for three years and then spent another three getting a City & Guilds qualification.
“You learned everything there was to know at the time about plants and their habits and covered all kinds of techniques from green-keeping and glass house work, growing fruit, vegetables and flowers to weed control and pruning.
“At that time, it wasn’t that long after the war and a lot of former estate gardeners from private service had come into the public areas so many of the big estates were sold off or broken up and their skills and knowledge was amazing.
“I was a keen young laddie and I learned so much from them, especially about things like fruit and vegetable growing from their experience in kitchen gardens.
“Now, there isn’t the emphasis on that sort of thing or the people around who know about it but it’s been invaluable to me in so many ways, from how to grow roses to grafting fruit trees.”
John also branched out into training in crop science at the Scottish Crop Research Institute at Invergowrie.
“That was fascinating because a lot of it was cutting edge stuff for the time, working out how to grow new varieties, what conditions they needed, trialling all kinds of new types of fruit and vegetables.
“My section was also involved in trials with the latest herbicides.
“The institute worked on a world-wide basis, with new things coming in from America, Canada and internationally.
“I was there at the time when blueberries, which are now so popular, were first brought in as young plants.
“It’s strange to look back now and think that I might have been one of the first people to pick them in this country.
“I was two years there before I went south for a job on a fruit farm in Sussex, then to college in Essex to study for my National Diploma and Advanced Diploma in Horticulture.”
Further experience in parks and leisure management led eventually to a return to Scotland to work in Livingston new town in landscape and forestry.
In the early 90s, he took up his paintbrush full time and came back to live in his native Dundee in 2001.
“Fate plays a hand in life, I think. I got my first red dot my first sale! in the Darlington Art Society Annual Exhibition in 1980 and painted from then on until I took it up seriously after I was made redundant in 1992.
“I’ve been very lucky to have these two very different but related passions. And they do feed into each other which is even better!”
He now runs workshops and art classes from his Dundee studio and his work sells all over the world, with many international visitors fetching up on his doorstep and at his exhibitions.
He also has a busy website, showcasing his subjects in original or limited edition print form, ranging from landscapes to figurative work, flowers and still lifes.
The life of the Stoa garden, however, rarely stands still and it’s something he relishes to the full. Nothing, not even the hard landscaping, is set in stone!
“We have serious slopes in this garden so that had to be taken into account when we were planning.
“It was important to work with the site, not try to make it do what it isn’t able to do or grow what can’t be grown in the soil and conditions.
“My advice to anyone who’s starting out like that would be, once you’ve established what your soil is like, then worked out the bits like how much sun you get and when, prevailing winds and suchlike, put in what you like.
“That’s what I did roses, climbers like ivies and clematis, fruit, flowers grouped so that you have something interesting and colourful all year round.
“You can display things to advantage either by themselves or alongside other plants I’ve just had a lovely display of red poppies and blue irises, for example, which will then go over and other combinations take over in another part of the garden.
“It’s great to use roses and clematis together, to cling and use each other as support. The RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) advises these two together and they really work.
“If you plan it properly, you can tie in one or two shoots and then let the clematis take over and do the job for you.
“Because I used to work in forestry, I know a bit about trees and how to treat them.
“One of the first things I’m going to write about for Courier readers is the way to treat leyland cypress trees because I’ve done that for myself and I know they are a problem a lot of people have!
“I love the garden, working on it and trying things out but it can be hard graft. You have to take time to enjoy it, too.
“We built three patio sections into ours over the years at different levels so that we can follow the sun as it moves round!”
Interestingly, John’s knowledge of and love for fruit trees has spilled over into his current gardening life.
He keeps in touch with his former colleagues at SCRI and has introduced new varieties of raspberries and strawberries into his garden, as well as growing fruit and veg in his Dundee allotment.
Not finding the results that he wanted from a particular apple tree, he tried grafts of a range of others, including the Oslin variety, a pippin grown at Arbroath Abbey by the Tironensian monks of the 12th and 13th centuries and recently re-introduced to its Angus roots at the Abbey itself and in the H.O.P.E. garden at Hospitalfield House in the town.
With grafts of three different varieties (including Discovery and Red Devil) on the same tree, John is confident they will produce an apple that will do well in the north-east of Scotland.
Global warming’s effects, used to advantage, also mean that he can grow peaches, figs and a vine that can produce around 100 bunches of small, juicy black grapes in a season.
John is also the only supplier of saskatoons in Britain. He sends plants all over the country and had a successful stand at Gardening Scotland this year, which led to an interview with The Beechgrove Garden’s Jim McColl.
These fruits, whose name comes from the Canadian town in Saskatchewan, are related to blueberries, similar in size and colour but, John maintains, “they’re easier to grow!
“You don’t have to have acid soil or treat your soil to acidify it as you do with blueberries.
“I saw them on holiday in Canada the native Canadians have known and enjoyed them for a long time.
“I knew they were grown here as ornamentals, but I wanted the right species to fruit and it’s worked very well.”
John may have expertise that many of us would envy, but he cheerfully admits that, in his regular visits to garden centres and shows all over the country, that he always comes away with a plant!
And although he works with nature, he likes to ring the changes.
“I move with the times,” he says firmly. “It’s the research background you move on, you change, you don’t stay the same.
“It’s like decorating or changing the furniture in your house. Every so often, it needs freshening up, new colours, new styles, a new outlook. A garden’s just the same if you’re going to get the best out of it.”.
John Stoa’s gardening column is a regular feature in The Courier’s new C2 Lifestyle supplement every Tuesday. His website is www.johnstoa.com.