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@ CONCLUSION Garden Imperialism THUS fAr the focus of this book has been on the life and afterlife of British colonial gardens in India. now it is time to put them in a larger context and try to tease out what they may tell us about British imperialism itself. A passion for gardens was by no means limited to India or to the British. rival powers, such as the french and Dutch, put their own stamp on their imperial landscapes, but none did so on the scale or with such lasting effect as the British. They created botanical gardens that doubled as public parks from Melbourne to St. vincent, from Zomba in nyasaland to Aburi in the Gold Coast. Thanks to the garden in Entebbe and its horticultural training programs, nairobi and Kampala were in the years immediately after independence “the most lavishly flowered towns in the world,” in the view of an eminent British garden historian. Where fever-ridden colonials in India retreated to the Himalayas and the nilgiris, in Malaysia they sought out Penang, in Africa the Jos Plateau of nigeria and the Eastern Highlands of Southern rhodesia. In a sense, Kenya’s Happy valley, the White Highlands, 304 ∂ conclusion was the ultimate hill station, inhabited not by birds of passage but by a perpetual population of self-proclaimed elite. following the lead of new Delhi, planners dreamed up new “garden city” capitals in Canberra and Lusaka. And as late as 1955 a full-fledged durbar met the young Queen Elizabeth and her consort on tour in northern nigeria, prompting her hosts to undertake the “thankless task” of growing grass on the hard-baked grounds and planting out geraniums in window boxes alongside the royal dais. After the durbar, with its display of mounted warriors in chain mail and “tribal” dancers, the royals greeted a thousand guests at a garden party on the lawns of Government House in Kaduna.1 In the remotest corners of the empire colonials great and small lovingly tended their own approximations of English gardens—including Scots and Irish (but less commonly Welsh), who were very much part of the empirebuilding project and just as partial to “English” gardens. At Grote Schur, outside Cape Town, Cecil rhodes ignored the advice of both francis Bacon and Gertrude Jekyll that a garden should be in intimate proportion to the house and planted an acre of hydrangeas far from shade and water. Sir Stewart Gore Browne carved an imposing estate out of the northern rhodesian bush, with terraced lawns, a walled ladies’ garden, roses, and an avenue of cypress trees (fig. 56). ordinary colonials simply tried to grow lawns and a few flowers from home amid the jacarandas and bougainvilleas. Expatriated to Egypt with her banker husband, Penelope Lively’s mother created a garden that was “unashamedly English in design—it had lawns and a lily pond with a willow, pergolas and formal beds and a rose garden”—but the drive to the house was lined with thirty-foot eucalyptuses. More ambitiously, the Egyptian Delta Land and Investment Company laid out the garden city of Maadi early in the twentieth century, transforming a swath of countryside into an “English township, with neat little roads lined with vine-covered houses, each with its large garden filled with trees and flowers and surrounded by a hedge.” Settled by a large colony of Anglo-Egyptians, it also attracted “highbrows addicted to gardening.”2 In northern nigeria, Muriel Bennett’s garden was home to a flowerloving monkey. Every morning he took her hand as she made her rounds and climbed trees to help her gather sprays of blossoms beyond her reach. roses held a special place in the hearts of those far from home. The Kenyan novelist ngugi wa Thiong’o describes the gardens of a high colonial official with their flame lilies, morning glory, sunflowers, and bougainvillea. “However, it was + 305 gardEn impErialism the gardens of roses that stood out in color above all the others. Mrs. Margery Thompson had cultivated red roses, white roses, pink roses—roses of all shades.” Alas, it was common wisdom in Africa that “planting roses was sure to lead to transfer.”3 one of the few spots on the imperial map that appeared ungardenable was Aden, a bastion of solid rock guarding the sea route to India, but even here Baron von orlich found “indefatigable” English officers importing mold from Arabia in an attempt to grow flowers and bananas in the mid-nineteenth century.After...

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