Garden Memories
I would have been about ten
when my father took me to see a friend who lived in a part of Wingate called
The Old Pit. I can’t recall the lady’s name but what I do remember, most
vividly, is being amazed at the sight of her garden. I suppose today it would
be described as a typical cottage garden, lawns surrounded by herbaceous
borders, full of flowers in a myriad of colours, with the tallest at the back.
It was where I saw hollyhocks for the
first time but it was the giant red hot pokers or kniphofias – flowers which
I’d never seen before - the memory of which has always particularly stayed with
me. (Ironically, it refuses to grow in my garden, much to husband Glynn’s
disappointment).
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| Red Hot Pokers at Howick Hall |
My grandparents, on
reflection, had a small front garden which was ablaze with colour, mainly roses
of various types, but we were never allowed in the garden, indeed I almost
forgot it was there when I stayed in the tiny Aged Miners’ Cottage where they
lived, for the front window of the two-up, two-down house was small and so
heavily clad in net curtaining to stop prying eyes from gazing in that it also
succeeded in inhibiting views of the garden for the insider trying to gaze out!
My uncle’s garden in the house
where I grew up was different. There was a small front garden, regimentally
ablaze with roses – Peace climbed
happily around the green garden fence and my uncle’s favourite, the icily
splendid Pascali, stood elegantly
amongst Whisky Mac, Ena Harkness and
others the names of which I’ve now forgotten. One didn’t walk in this garden
for there was no path and it was bordered by a low red brick wall which I
bravely walked along one day, falling off and hitting my head on a large, very
hard man-hole cover. Blood spurting from my head, my aunt calmly cut away chunks
of my hair to uncover the offending cut, dabbed it with stinging iodine and
rubbed butter on my forehead to subdue any bruising. I never ‘walked the wall’
again!
The back garden, however, was
given over to vegetables and was fronted by a narrow border in which pot marigolds rioted alongside annual clarkia which was given to me to sow
from a cheap packet of seed from Woolworths. This garden backed on to The Drill
Hall and evenings were punctuated by regimental noises off. Uncle George grew mostly root vegetables in
very straight rows – no pulses at all: peas for Sunday dinner were either
steeped overnight or were marrowfats from a Batchelors tin!
The soil was riddled almost to
extinction and manured to growing perfection. Whenever a horse deposited in the
street a competition took place as to who could collect the offending matter
first. (I often won, prompted by my uncle). I was also sent on mole foraging
visits to nearby Tudhoe Wood to collect the meticulous, red soil from the
abounding mole hills, my uncle being convinced that it encouraged the
vegetables to grow. He may well have been right as he regularly managed to
produce enough to feed four hungry
adults and one very parky child more than adequately, for I don’t recall my
aunt buying many vegetables other than
new potatoes in season, my uncle preferring to grow maincrop for mash and
chips.
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| Gertrude Jekyll rose in Pablo's garden |
Our first house had a minute
circular bit of garden surrounded by dull concrete and quite a large back yard
where we decided to try to manufacture a garden from breeze blocks. Our neighbour worked for the builder Harold
Stephenson and arranged for a ton of topsoil to be delivered. It was dumped in
the back lane and I spent hours with a borrowed wheelbarrow tipping it inside
the breeze block border. Eventually roses, sweet peas and bedding plants
tumbled alongside miniature cypresses which I struggled to dig up when we moved
on to our present house with its large prize-winning garden – complete with
central lawn and wide herbaceous borders - reminiscent of that Old Pit garden
of my childhood.
Knowing very little about
plant needs and names, other than weeding and restraining over-eager climbers, in
the first year I did very little other than consult RHS books and borrow lots
of gardening tomes from the local library to try to identify exactly what was
growing in the garden. I still have the original notebook of names and a tentative
outline planting scheme begun in 1979 and am constantly amazed by the number
and variety of plants which were already in situ. This was a garden of mature
apple trees – one with a wonky branch that was a regular haunt of a tawny owl,
now long gone – and two large pear trees which then produced delicious
conference-type pears. My mother-in-law tipsily delighted in the wine produced!
The design of the borders
remains much as it did back in 1979 with
the addition of many more and different plants. A summer house – a surprise 50th
birthday present – delights at the bottom of the garden and the vegetable and
strawberry patches behind it now are given over to herbs, a small woodland-type
area and yet more herbaceous planting. There is also a tiny pond with a pygmy
water lily and last year’s frogspawn produced tadpoles but no frogs as yet,
sadly.
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| A selection of garden flowers in Auntie Bell's old teapot |
My husband looks after the
lawns and aims for cricket ground stripes, not always successfully. Pablo cat
is master of all he surveys and has his own ‘penthouse flat’, complete with
fleecy bedding, on the top staging of the greenhouse from where he lords it
over any other cat which dares to trespass in his garden domain. His exploits and adventures in the garden can
be followed in the Garden for Pablo blog.
(Originally compiled
for Wendy Robertson’s ‘ Writing Game’
which was broadcast monthly on Bishop FM
– 105.9 and is available as a podcast)
The autumn leaves
Fall,
leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen
night and shorten day:
Every
leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering
from the autumn tree.
Emily Bronte
We always spent the October
school holidays – ‘potato picking week’ it was always referred to – in Scarborough, renting a small cottage near the church
where Ann Bronte was buried. The weather was variable of course. We had some
wonderful sunny days spent walking on the beach, followed by milky coffee or
hot chocolate at the nearby Harbour Bar and equally squally days watching the
waves beat against the harbour wall, drenching foolhardy folk who ventured too
close for dry comfort.
But for me the week was always
associated with the crunching sound of autumn leaves which lined the verges and
blew about the Italian
Gardens. There is
something very comforting about reverting to childhood and trampling the leaves
underfoot and, when no one is about, jumping into the desiccated mounds.
The ideal gardener collects
fallen leaves, stuffs them into plastic bin bags, pierces the bags a few times,
and then adds a drop of water to aid the rotting process. The filled bags are
then hidden at the bottom of the garden and left for months until able to be
used as compost in their own right.
I’m afraid I’m too impatient
to do that and instead swish them onto the borders where I hope they’ll act as
a mulch and help protect the plants from winter frosts.
Leaves
Just
watch the leaves twirl in and out
As if
they were alive.
They
circle, twist and twirl about
Like
bees around a hive.
They
trip it so in mazy reel,
It
cannot be by chance:
I
think it must be fairy folk
Who
teach the leaves to dance.
Anonymous poem
from ‘Our Book of Poetry’
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