There’s a period of suspension between the summer solstice on June 21 and Midsummer’s Day on the 24th, when the whole garden seems to be holding its breath. The solstice is the day when the sun stands still (from the Latin sol plus sistere, to stand still). This is the day when the sun reaches the Tropic of Cancer, the most northerly point of the ecliptic, the imaginary line described by the sun in its apparent orbit around the earth. And just as a ball, thrown high up into the air, appears to hesitate for a moment and hang motionless at the limit of its trajectory before falling back to earth, so the golden ball of the sun appears to stand still for a few days over the Tropic of Cancer before “turning” (hence the word “tropic”, from the Greek tropos, a turn) back towards the equator.
It’s a magical time, marked with special ceremony since the dawn of history. And while we may not nowadays light bonfires on Midsummer’s Eve or greet the sunrise at Stonehenge (not many of us, anyway), old habits die hard: like the forgotten little rivers of London — “Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy, Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet” in U. A. Fanthorpe’s marvellous poem Rising Damp, they may go underground, but they are still there, running beneath the houses, and they still perturb our sleep with their subterranean rumblings.
The quintessential midsummer text is A Midsummer Night’s Dream — when, for one night, the rules of the everyday world are suspended, relationships are shuffled like a pack of cards, and the characters emerge blinking into the dawn, seeing the world with new eyes. And a garden is, of course, the perfect setting. Outdoor performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream this summer include Oystermouth Castle Grounds (Aug 17-18 as part of the Swansea Bay Festival, 01792 475715) and Trinity College Cambridge Gardens (July 11-30, 01223 338400). Chapterhouse Theatre Company is also touring with its outdoor production throughout the summer (01522 569222).
What happens to the two pairs of lovers lost in the wood in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is genuinely frightening, despite the comedy. There was always a strong undertow of anxiety about Midsummer celebrations. Midsummer Day (June 24) is the feast of St John the Baptist — like Christmas, a Christianisation of the old pagan rites held at the solstice on the 21st. And like Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve and Hallowe’en (All Hallows Eve), the vigil on the evening before was always the most potent time. The sun might be at its highest and strongest, but Midsummer Day ushered in the hottest and unhealthiest time of the year, the season when crops, herds and humans were all at their most vulnerable to disease, drought or downpours. On Midsummer Eve bonfires were lit on the windward side of the fields so that the smoke would drift across the crops and purify them. Cattle were driven through the embers to bring good luck. Special herbs, including St John’s wort, were burnt in the fire.
St John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) is a daintier native version of that thuggish incomer, the rose of sharon (Hypericum calycinum), and has similar though smaller shining yellow flowers, and leaves perforated with tiny holes. To allay our modern fears and depressions we take our St John’s wort in tablet form. And instead of bonfires today we have fireworks: no summer garden party seems complete without an explosion of sound and colour to round off proceedings. I’m not above a little ritual propitiation myself: the cold dry weather last month has so far kept the black spot at bay on the roses, but my fingers are remaining firmly crossed.
Advertisement
Many of us also still feel an atavistic urge to chart the course of the sun: sundials have undergone an enormous revival in the past few years and are now almost as much a part of modern gardens as they were of 16th and 17th- century ones. This week the Sundial Trail in the gardens of the Horniman Museum in South London was completed. The Horniman’s 16 acres (6.5 ha) of gardens now contain 12 sundials, featuring several methods of checking the time, including an Analemmatic Sundial, where you tell the time by measuring your own shadow, and the ingenious Ceiling Dial inside the CUE Building, which not only indicates the hour by reflecting the Sun ‘s rays on to a dial by means of a mirror, but also indicates the year’s solstices and equinoxes. Just the thing for the modern sun-worshipper.
Horniman Museum, South Circular Road (A205), Forest Hill, South London. Open daily 10.30am5.30pm. Free admission to museum and gardens (020-8699 1872)