Partridge in the Pampas
Ursula Buchan
Inever used to like Pampas grass. In fact, 1 hated it. It was one of the first plants I could name as a child, but not because it appealed to me. There was a large clump in the garden of the school I attended when I was seven and, on almost the first day, I cut my hands painfully and bloodily on its leaves.
If that sounds bizarre, you have never had a close encounter with Cortaderia selloana, the imposing, tussock-forming, evergreen Pampas grass from temperate parts of South America. `Cortadora' is a Spanish-American term meaning 'cutter', so I was not the first person to notice the sharp-toothed margins to the thin, ribbon leaves. The reason I must have been initially attracted to it was the presence of 8ft-tall plumes of ivory, silvery-white or pinkish seedheads, which are at their finest at the beginning of the school year in September. These days in gardens it is most often represented by the form `Sunningdale Silver' or the more compact Pumila'. and occasionally by two variegated forms, 'Albolineata' and 'Aureolineata'.
Although the grass family generally has become very popular with gardeners in recent years, Cortaderia has lost some ground, the victim I think of an association that has built up in the public mind between it and 'suburban' gardens, where it was once a common specimen plant growing in neat lawns. That was never my objection, however, for at a distance it has a stately quality (and, anyway, what is wrong with the suburban garden?), but I have always found it too large and striking to meld easily in bed or border. And, what is more, I have never wanted to grow a plant that I, and my inquisitive children, would have to treat with great circumspection.
Although easy enough to grow, Pampas grass is a bit of a pain when mature, for the inner leaves die yet do not shrivel, so have to be cut and removed. Most people balk at doing this, unless their hands are clad in leather gauntlets, so the tradition has grown up of setting fire to the old leaves in the autumn or winter. Which is fun, incidentally, although not to be recommended if the clump is close to the house.
My objections to this plant were severely undermined recently, however, after I read an article in the Field (the 'Hedgerow Spectator') about the famous West Barsham wild grey partridge shoot in Norfolk and its legendary keeper, Ted Streeter. A most thoughtful man, plainly, he has taken to planting strips of Pampas grass to provide shelter for the English partridge whose welfare and conservation he fosters. The wild grey partridge (as opposed to the red-legged French partridge) is a most particular bird. It is highly territorial, but apparently can be fooled into putting up with smaller territories if it can hear but not see other birds. It likes to be dry and warm (rain cannot easily penetrate a fully-grown Cortaderia clump), yet able to see out, and benefits hugely from being protected from the predatory sparrowhawk. Pampas grass provides winter shelter for insects, and larvae for the chicks in spring. This plant somehow fulfils many of the English partridge's needs, although it takes a near-genius to have made the connection.
Such matters are much in my mind, and possibly in that of my labrador, Kipling, at the moment. You may think that 1 November is just another autumn Saturday but, to him. it is a red-letter day. He has waited nine months, with increasing impatience as the weather has grown colder, for the first day of his pheasant and French partridge picking-up season. He doesn't get many days' work but each blissfully punctuates the catatonic boredom and pointlessness of a pet's life. And, for me, the chance to collaborate so closely with an animal, who does what he does through a happy mix of instinct and breeding, means that I now know something of the magic — in miniature, of course — that a huntsman feels when working his pack of hounds.
Today, Kip and I will stand in a wood, many yards behind the 'guns', watching and waiting. I will lean against a tree but be, though given to the Labrador Lean at home, will sit bolt upright, ears and nose twitching compulsively. For this is Business. I will note the colours of the leaves, spiralling downwards in the still air, the clean black ash buds, the progress of a honeysuckle entwined round an oak, the nascent buds of hellebore flowers. We will listen for the blast on the policeman's
whistle and gunshots, then count (yes, I mean both of us) and mark the fallers. And when the noise and press and flurry of action is over, I will lean once more on a tree and idly wonder what the field hedges would look like were they topped with waving plumes of Pampas grass.
Ursula Buchan's latest book of collected journalism, Better Against a Wall, which includes articles that have appeared in The Spectator, is published by John Murray at £16.99.
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