Meetings with plants in winter: yew
Bramble & Briar #83
January in the garden; hard, bone cold and bitter. Undeniably beautiful, and never more so than when the sun shines, raising the temperature to a degree or so above freezing for an hour or so, and threatening to dislodge the glittering crust of ice left by last night’s frost. Cold spells here in the soft south are usually more fleeting than this. I’m grateful for the winter pruning work on roses, apples and pears, and slumbering deciduous shrubs, but since I can barely get at anything else in the garden – the potting compost in the greenhouse frozen almost as solid as the the ground outside – I’d like a decent fall of snow to go with the ice. Snow brightens everything up, at least until the slushy thaw, which is the price you pay for the experience. The yew wears it all – snow, frost, sun and rain – just as well.
I have left all of the yew here shaggy, more by accident than design. Which is to say I noticed it needed doing late in the autumn, when I didn’t have the time, and when in early winter I did have the opportunity, I chose to leave it be. Yew is tough, and probably wouldn’t have cared either way, but I’m allowing myself the smug satisfaction of knowing that its unkempt edges give it some protection from the coldest weather. Evergreen trees like yew grow throughout the year, slowing in winter but rarely stopping, and I wasn’t keen on serving up the fresh growth and wounded stems that follow a clipping session to the worst that winter has to offer. The only downside is that I miss that icing sugar dusting over its neatly undulating topography, but I’ve not left that itch entirely unscratched, having been more organised in other gardens. And anyway, a wafty yew is a thing of beauty. You just need to make sure – if you want to feel any responsibility for the form it takes – that you don’t let it waft too far, for too long.
Left to its own devices, the yew (Taxus baccata) is a significant tree, a handsome conifer with deep, green needles, and a cinnamon-coloured bark. Throughout these islands, ancient yews have stood for centuries at the heart of communities, central to Druidic spirituality before being adopted, along with these established places of worship, by the then nascent Chrisitan church, perhaps explaining the association between old yews and old churchyards. A symbol of immortality for the Celts or, more accurately, of death and resurrection – with heavily drooping branches rooting where they meet the ground and throwing up young trees – almost all parts of the yew are toxic, from the needles to the tiny flowers to the bark and the wood. The only part of the yew you can eat without fear is the fleshy red aril around the hard, round seed, though it’s not something I’m keen to try. The sombre reputation has followed the tree from tradition to modern-day medicine; although the taxanes used in certain forms of chemotherapy are now mostly synthetic, they were originally extracted from the needles of the yew.
It seems mildly absurd that a tree with such a serious and noble pedigree should allow itself to become a hedge, and clipped into all manner of ridiculous topiary shapes. A peacock, or a chess piece. A squirrel. Other shapes are available; the rude ones are always appreciated by the best of us – what’s a garden for if you can’t get at least a few decent sniggers out of it? The wonderful thing about the yew is that, whatever shape you encounter it in, it seems exactly right, and not at all as if it was holding that form under sufferance – a celebrity who could easily trade on their reputation, but displays instead a refreshing absence of ego. David Beckham standing in line for the Lying-in-State of Her Maj, rather than... others we could mention. Which is just as well, because yew forms the most excellent backdrop to so much of the garden – a deep green living wall content to let anything and everything else, from dandelion to dahlia, take the limelight, and making them look fabulous by complement rather than comparison. And here, in the heart of winter, when so much else seems held in stasis by the cold, the yew barely seems to change, pulsing out the exact same comforting, steady kind of energy it radiates throughout the rest of the year. Handsome, reliable and, in our case just now, a little on the wafty side.
Such wonderful description of a stellar plant, Andrew. Yew really is the perfect backdrop isn't it. It's a wonder, as you say, how it allows itself to be clipped into a hedge. I love the idea that it is without ego. As a lover of topiary I'm keen to plant a few in my new garden. Thanks for sharing this , Andrew.
Franny
Oscar fits so well! Fun to have a bush named Oscar in the garden. Your post has me headed out into the garden for photos of the new snow that fell overnight. Temperature is still good but dropping tonight to below zero here in the mid USA.