一生不羁爱自由，敢向全英国人说不，被经济学人贴上反传统的标签，他是英国园艺界的乔布斯｜讣告赏析
关于《经济学人》讣告赏析系列可以参考：我读《经济学人》讣告。
这期选择了英国园丁 Christopher Lloyd，一是作为一个对园艺一窍不通的人，我想知道园丁的一生是怎样的，他的世界观是怎样的，他在“讨论园艺时究竟在讨论什么”；二是园艺是英国人生活中非常重要的一部分，《经济学人》多篇讣告也都留给了园丁，我想知道这位园丁和别的园丁有何不同，为什么应该被人们熟知。当然，我相信作者 Ann Wroe 写什么人物都能写得引人入胜。
这篇文章里的生词不少，但不影响我们了解这位园丁，正好也可以锻炼阅读陌生主题材料的能力。
讣告原文与赏析
Christopher Lloyd, an iconoclastic English gardener, died on January 27th, 2006, aged 84
“iconoclastic”是这个英国园丁的标签，悬念十足，一个园丁有什么好反传统的？能反到哪里？
1 VISITORS to Great Dixter, an old, rambling, timber-framed house among the steep woods and pastures of the High Weald, on the borders of Kent and Sussex in the south of England, would find it haunted by several tutelary spirits. One, with pipe in mouth and owlish mien, was the shade of Sir Edwin Lutyens, who after 1910 laid out the gardens in what had been a cattle yard. Another, with pebble-spectacles, trug and boots, was the ghost of Gertrude Jekyll, whose principles of gardening first informed the place. And then—short, stout, moustachioed, and looking at first sight as though he might empty a blunderbuss on you as soon as invite you to tea—was Christopher Lloyd. If he was not there, his familiar spirits Yucca, Canna and Dahlia, short-tempered dachshunds, kept guard over the turf.
《经济学人》讣告开篇常用的一种写法是给读者营造一种身临其境的感觉，从写作对象的居所、房间或某个场景开始写，比如在写哥伦比亚作家加西亚马尔克斯时也用了这种方法。这不难理解，因为从一个人居所的环境、装饰、摆设等等能看到看到这个人的经历、品味、性情和性格等。正如我们熟知的那句话：“你现在的气质里，藏着你走过的路 ，读过的书和爱过的人。” 关键是这样写就是 let facts speak for themselves，看似简单实则很见功夫。
作者说的“several tutelary spirits”当然不是真实的神灵，而是用一种略带神秘感的方式引出了几个和这个花园有历史渊源的重要人物。段尾句将丝兰、美人蕉和大丽花称为“familiar spirits”，和前面三位人物归为了同一类，可见这是一个人花平等的地方。在这里，花草皆有生命。
2 Save for short spells at Rugby School and Cambridge, Mr Lloyd lived at Great Dixter all his life. He learned gardening there, helping his mother prick out seedlings as a child, and found he never wanted to do anything else. In a country devoted to gardening, Mr Lloyd thus became its best plantsman. With his invaluable head gardener, Fergus Garrett, he stomped round his five-acre domain, ceaselessly experimenting with trees, shrubs and flowers. Each plant would be inspected twice daily, and each experiment recorded in a weatherproof notebook. The fruits of his observations became columns in Country Life, Gardens Illustrated and the Guardian, and were turned into more than 20 books.
开头一句足见 Christopher Lloyd 对 Great Dixter 这个地方的感情之深。第三句读完才知 Christopher Lloyd 的实力，原来是英国园艺最出色的人，好比寿司界的小野次郎。“stomped”是“重踏”之意，非常精准，和后面的“ceaselessly”一起写出了 Christopher Lloyd 对这一亩三分地的用情之深和付出。不禁想起了艾青的这句诗：“为什么我的眼里常含泪水？我为什么对这片土地爱得深沉？ ”
每株植物每日都要检查两遍，每次实验都要记录，这是什么精神？不愧是英国最好的园艺人。我发现世界上不管任何领域，最牛的人一定是最努力也是对自己的领域最热爱的人。而且他们不会去找什么捷径，只会在日复一日的枯燥实践中感悟、学习、精进。
3 “Christo”, as everyone called him, was a great believer in such discipline, which he said he had learnt from the Japanese. But it was only half his philosophy, and not even the more important half. His strongest belief was in freedom and fun. He advised gardeners to plant what they liked, throw out what they didn't, discard all previous notions of colour, arrangement and taste, put up two fingers to horticultural rectitude and “Go for it”.
这段从 Christopher Lloyd 做的事情转移到了他的内心世界。除了自律，他最深的信念是自由和乐趣。我一下子喜欢上了这个老头子，一个求真、务实的人。从这里也第一次能理解为什么作者贴的标签是“iconoclastic”。我还想到了电影《死亡诗社》里面的高中英文老师 Mr. Keating，《放牛班的春天》里的音乐老师 Clément，《三宝大闹宝莱坞》里的天才理工男 Rancho。在这段我和 Christopher Lloyd 产生了共鸣，我在想如果我和他住的不远，一定会和他做朋友，听他分享自己的园艺观和世界观。
4 In the staid, quiet world of English gardening, this was dynamite. Not so far from Great Dixter, at Sissinghurst Castle, lay the epitome of English taste in Vita Sackville-West's White Garden, surrounded by equally soothing beddings in blue, lilac and mauve. Mr Lloyd waved it aside. What about “Challenging Orange” or “Nothing to Fear Red”? What about a great big bush of mauve-pink Daphne mezereum underplanted with a carpet of Crocus x luteus, in bright orange-yellow? “The two colours may be shouting at each other,” he wrote, “but they are shouting for joy.”
这段划线句写出了 Christopher Lloyd 的大胆和态度。他敢向英国人的口味说不，因为他知道什么是更好的。他的自信来自于尝试和对事物全新的理解。比如从最后一句可以看出，他不是一个消极学习前人的园丁，而是有原创见解的思考者。乔布斯也是这样的吧。在 Apple 风扉全球之前人们以为 PC 只能是那种样子。
5 Mr Lloyd believed in mixing up plants that had never been together before. His ambition was a closely-woven tapestry of colours and textures in which foliage—matt or shiny, grey or variegated, grass or coniferous—was as important as the flowers. In the borders at Great Dixter banana trees grew with verbena, and spiky agave with dahlias. Climbers, annuals, perennials and shrubs all clambered about, “helping each other”, as Mr Lloyd liked to say, with their sheer differences of habit. His borders were a paean to desegregation. When he showed slides of them at his lectures, audiences would sometimes gasp with horror.
第二句将 Christopher Lloyd 的特立独行做了延伸。他要尝试和挑战的是人们没有关注或不认为值得关注的，即叶子的意义是否只应该是陪衬。
6 His iconoclasm went beyond colour and arrangement. He believed that plants should go their own way in gardens. If a yellow spike of mullein decided to grow in a clump of bright pink phlox, he welcomed it. (“Hurrah for vulgarity!”, as he wrote once.) He was delighted that lichens made patterns on his York stone paths, and that wild birds-foot trefoil colonised the Sunken Garden. These gave him ideas.
段首句是简洁的承上启下过渡句。Christopher Lloyd 的不拘一格不局限于表面的颜色和配花，而在于一种更完整和深层次的认知。我想到了“laissez-faire”这个法文词，放任自由，不做限制。结果是最后一句，开放的心态让他有了新的点子。
7 Two small lawns at the front of the house were always left unmown until the autumn. Mr Lloyd wanted orchids and fritillaries to grow there, but also hoped to enjoy the wind and light in the grass. Once he allowed a rambler rose to get so out of hand that it killed two holm oaks and made a gap in a hedge; but Mr Lloyd so liked what he saw through the gap, the twisted trunk of a crab-apple tree framed in ilex leaves, that he made a feature of it, underplanting the crab for good measure with bright yellow Epimedium pinnatum.
8 Certain flowers he loved especially. He would brake violently for poppies seen at the roadside, and gloried in lupins and clematis. Hydrangeas, on the other hand, were “anaemic” and most salvias “rubbish”. Roses and lavender he had little luck with; his clay soil was too heavy. He had a special fondness for the white Japanese anemones that backed, calmly and blankly, the psychedelic annuals he tried out in his beds.
9 His greatest appreciation, however, was for the hedges and trees that gave architectural structure to his garden, and held its history. The winding yew hedges at Great Dixter had been planted by his father, who had bought the house with his printing fortune. For Mr Lloyd they had “a presence”, seeming to inhabit his garden rather than grow there. He treasured the fig trees introduced by Lutyens—their huge leaves so useful in his plantings—and the few pear trees left from the original farm orchard. On the western boundary stood a line of ash trees that he wished, in dictatorial moods, to cut down, because they filled his garden with seeds. But then freedom and joy prevailed: there was nothing quite like a sunset seen through their faint feathered leaves.
《经济学人》讣告的结尾一般都会巧妙地呼应开头，这篇也不例外。感觉作者在带我们去探访了一圈 Christopher Lloyd 的花园后又回到了入口处，也回到了第一段提到的“several tutelary spirits”。最妙的是，作者从花园西侧外部的梣木（ash trees）这一细节入手，再次回到了第三段中提到的 Christopher Lloyd 最深的信仰：“freedom and joy”完美对应上文的“freedom and fun”。结尾句以一个场景结束，让人回味。
我想到 William Zinsser 在 On Writing Well 一书中关于结尾部分的几句话：
The positive reason for ending well is that a good last sentence—or last paragraph—is a joy in itself. It gives the reader a lift, and it lingers when the article is over.
他还分享了自己的结尾写法心得，和 Ann Wroe 的不谋而合：
Something I often do in my own work is to bring the story full circle—to strike at the end an echo of a note that was sounded at the beginning. It gratifies my sense of symmetry, and it also pleases the reader, completing with its resonance the journey we set out on together.
没错，之前我也不知道一个园丁能有什么值得学习的。现在，我越来越觉得不管人们做什么职业，从事什么行业，住在哪里，说什么语言，这些都是表象。在内心世界里，总有一些信念可以让大家产生共鸣。可能这也是美国国徽上那句拉丁格言“E plubibus unum” (Out of many, one) 的另一层含义吧。
关于这个版块有什么问题欢迎在评论区留言。也欢迎推荐《经济学人》历来的讣告人物。
题图：Christopher Lloyd.
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