I compered a Quiz last night. It was at the Garden Museum in London and the audience was studded with the great, the good and the not bad of the British garden world. The museum is based in a disused church just next door to Lambeth Palace (which is the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury) and holds exhibitions, lectures and tours of gardens.

Anyway I thought it might be interesting to put up some of those questions to keep you on your toes.They are not specifically horticultural but all have some connection to gardens, gardening and garden history.

The rules are: No Googling, no reference books and I will put up the answers in a couple of weeks. I apologise in advance that most of the questions are Eurocentric. Email your answers to me at [email protected] will send the winner an appropriately inscribed copy of my book, 101 Bold and Beautiful Flowers. Sound reasonable?

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

1. The Sloe is the fruit of which tree?

2. What did Edwin Beard Budding invent after watching a machine trimming the nap of cloth? 

3. Which plant can be hoogiana, sibirica, reticulata or germanica?

4. Shakespeare wrote “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet? In which play?

5. What is Apple Jack?

6. In the mid 19th century which product was the most important export from the Peruvian Chincha Islands? It was used as fertiliser on farms and gardens in both Europe and the USA.

7. A Frenchman wants to stay in the USA, a horticulturist wants an apartment with a magnificent conservatory only available to married couples. In which film did Gerard Depardieu and Andie Macdowell decide on a marriage of convenience?

8. What was the 1967 Hit song for The Flowerpot Men?

9. What vegetable is supposed to improve the eyesight? Does it work ?

10. Which vegetable is measured on the Scoville scale?

11. What are Nepenthes and who should be very wary of them?

12. What cargo was the Bounty (as in the Mutiny on the Bounty) carrying from Tahiti?

13. What do the initials RHS stand for?

14. With what arboricultural technique are the following connected: Chokkan, Kengai, and Sabamiki ?

15. In the Language of Flowers, red roses symbolise love. What do yellow roses symbolise?

16. In baseball who are the Gardeners?

17. Fill in the missing line to this 1928 Fats Waller song:

Every honey bee fills with jealousy

When they see you out with me

I don’t blame them

Goodness knows……

18. Roses come in many colours. Which colour does not feature?

19. Who was the associate of John Bartram, lawyer, soldier politician, scientist, doctor and botanist who first introduced the Linnaean system to America ?

20. What is the national flower of Japan (also the name given to the Imperial Throne of Japan, the oldest constitutional monarchy in the world)?

So there you go. It is not that easy but quite interesting. The pictures accompanying this blog are only slightly relevant: they are pictures of the Rose garden at Hever Castle which was the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII.

I hope that you find time to enter, it would be good to hear from you.