Cambridge colleges – The Cambridge Placebook

June 30, 2021July 5, 2021

Newnham Permaculture Garden

The way to the secret garden is through a pale blue gate in the brick garden wall of an imposing Victorian house (dubbed the Pightle); through a passageway of forsythia and lilac and across the big back lawn (watch out for badger worm dig-holes) occupied only by a garden shed and some scattered lawn furniture and banks of tall, dark trees full of birdsong; through a stand of brush and hedge under which badgers have dug their elaborate sett and are sleeping somewhere underfoot[1]; and beyond this hedge are the plots of once-fallow ground claimed for now by enterprising, green-hearted Newnhamites, who have built and sprouted a community of gardens. First labor of love: the allotment beds for Fellows and students, and on the neighboring square, the subject of this post: the Newnham Garden Club’s new permaculture garden.

March 28, 2021July 5, 2021

Field Notes: Spring’s Progress

In Cambridge now, we’re teetering at the peak of daffodils and cherry blossoms. But the colors started with the crocuses, with layer on layer of new faces emerging since then. Was this the beginning of spring, over a month before the equinox? Less tidy than the succession of flowers, many species of wind and cloud and sun flow through these early months, hybridizing winter and spring. But petals and their colors and birds with their eloquence won’t be ignored as they talk of the changing seasons. I’ve been taking notes.

December 23, 2020July 5, 2021

Newnham College Garden

A common misconception I encounter when I tell people that I study plant ecology is that I must know all about gardening. In fact, I have to reply, I don’t have much of a green thumb. Ecology isn’t horticulture, and although I love observing plants in their natural habitats and other people’s gardens, I haven’t yet had the space or patience to work out what keeps plants happy in my own plot of soil. I feel vaguely guilty about this—it seems I should have more interest in the real-time lives of plants. And yet my intentions to get into gardening have yet to become more.

So it was both par for the course (albeit in a backwards way) and perhaps a sign when, a few weeks ago, I was stopped in the Newnham Porters Lodge by a passing staff member with a question. She had heard my flatmate and me talking and asked tentatively if we were American, and this may be a strange question but did we know anything about plants? (We had not been talking about plants.) She went on to say that the Development Team were making a video for North American alumnae and they needed American students to help interview the head gardener, ask about American plants, etc; might we be interested? My flatmate was bemused by the fragmented request, but I, although still not entirely sure what she was asking for, said, “Actually, yes, I study plant ecology, and sure, why not?” Followed by the usual caveat about horticulture.

A few days later I got an email from an enthusiastic project director, Beth, who explained the video was a virtual college tour for US and Canada-based alumnae for the 150^th College anniversary, and that this was the first project she was directing herself and she was so excited, but wanted to give me an opportunity to say no—but I assured her I was happy to help. Hobnobbing with the head gardener sounded like fun, and in any case, it should make a good story.

December 5, 2020July 5, 2021

Field Notes: Newnham in Autumn

Yesterday brought the first early-morning snow of winter to Cambridge. Having been tipped off by the forecast the day before, I knew what the muffled calls and screams of children meant when they woke me up, even with the curtains closed and my brain still groggy. Within a few hours of sunrise, the half-inch of snow was latticed into slush on the lawns and rooftops, and soon after that, was gone. (Having spent nine Decembers in Idaho, I’m not impressed.)

Today brought near-frozen sunshine, which I’m now watching gather into sunset just after 3 pm. The walnut tree outside my window is all a-crag with empty branches; I can only see a single leaf clinging and waving.

All this is to say that winter is here. So my post today is a tribute to the memory of the glorious autumn I was so unusually intimate with here in Newnham, working at my south-facing window in my college room, taking strolls for breaks. Here are some of my field notes.

October 10, 2020July 5, 2021

Newnham College: A Tour

Newnham College and its surrounding lush, peaceful neighborhood was one of the reasons I wanted to end my 6-month pandemic hiatus and return to Cambridge for the fall. In a time when mobility is limited, this is a good place to be.

March 14, 2019July 5, 2021

King’s College Chapel

Last Sunday, I watched the sun set through the West Window of King’s College Chapel. I saw the massive arc of flaming primary colors cool into sultry shades, then disintegrate into dim fragments and black bars, then shadowed chaos, until finally only the hulking dark-veiled window was left, and the cavernous stone.

When my friend asked me if I could step in last minute on the cello for a weekend concert gig for the King’s College Music Society, rehearsal and performance in the chapel, I wasn’t going to say no. I’d been inside the famous chapel to attend a few other performances, giving me a chance to stare at the fan-vaulted ceiling from the audience, but the opportunity to play in there, even just to claim the right to spend more than an hour or two in there, was one of those Cambridge pinch-myself phenomena. Tourists travel hundreds of miles (and pay £9 on top of that) for a few minutes craning their necks in the chapel, and here I have a nonchalant invitation to spend hours under that 500-year-old ceiling, participating in its soundscape.