WHY DO WE GARDEN? (PART ONE)

My influences began as a child

Apr 17, 2022

I grew up with a garden. It was a fairly unremarkable, suburban plot and yet I remember so much about it. Old photographs help of course. Me as a plump baby, teething cheeks flushed and raw and, in the background, a rustic arbour. Popular back then, in the 1950s.

Me, aged around five months, in our suburban Belfast garden with my mum

The rustic poles whose criss-cross pattern divided the garden into two, were removed in the early 1960s when I was growing up. They were replaced with a rockery (the new fashion for the 1960s). Huge stones heaved into place by my father, directed by my mother, for the careful positioning of tiny plants tucked in and around these rocks and left to spread and fill all the crevices so they looked for all the world like an Alpine mountainside in miniature. At least, that was the aim.

I remember lying in bed on long summer evenings. A gentle breeze sucking the curtains out and then sending them billowing back in again. It seemed ridiculous to be expected to sleep when daylight still poured in. Outside, my father cutting the lawn when he got home from work and had eaten his tea: the repetitive whirr as he pulled it, pushed it, pulled it, pushed it (no electric or petrol mower for him - far too fancy and expensive). The spinning metal blades sending a cloud of fluttering green into the air and releasing that most delicious of all smells, freshly mown grass on the still, balmy air.

The patch of mint my mother would send me out to pick from for the Sunday roast. Me walking slowly, deliberately, scissors facing downwards. “Pop a handful down to Mrs Mitchell, will you?” I would carefully snip extra stems, and gather them into my palm releasing the sweet, intoxicating scent. It can still send me back there: dressed in Sunday best – sticky-out, shell-pink, tulle dress, just back from church, the house smelling of roast lamb, Two-way Family Favourites on the radio. Looking down at my ankle socks and patent shoes as I walked carefully clutching my precious cargo. Down the drive, out the gate, quiet street, next-door-but-one, knock-on-the-door, smiling face, bending down, beaming thanks. Return journey. Well done!

THE DREAM TEAM

My mother grew the flowers, my father vegetables. A slope of earth behind the, newly built, garage was the designated spot for the neat rows of radish and lettuce: I’d watched my father sow the seeds carefully, working to a straight line marked out with string stretched between two bamboo canes.

There was a triumphant mood when he unearthed the first potatoes. How strange that this uninteresting plant with insignificant flowers should yield such a bounty when the foliage yellowed and began to die. Clearly it was all going on underneath. Hidden away in the depths of the soil, tiny cream tubers had been forming for weeks and now, with a prise of the garden fork, they came to the surface, creamy-white and stark on the rich dark earth - grown large enough to wash, boil with a sprig of mint and smother with butter for tea.

My father tried to interest me in the fact that these were the first earlies, “Next, in about three weeks will come second earlies and after that the maincrop” he explained. I found all of this boring. I was much more interested in the lawn. That other world where, when you lay on your stomach you could watch ants busying through the base of the bright green blades and the occasional bee lifting lazily from one clover bloom to another. I even found a caterpillar once, contorting its fat green body as it struggled through the miniature jungle.

I liked it when my father hadn’t found time to get the mower out. Then the daisies grew. I picked them carefully where the stem met the rosette of basal leaves, keeping their stems as long as possible. I used my thumb nail, as my mother had shown me, to make a slit in the stem and then carefully threaded the next stem through it until the pretty flower-head caught and stayed. With enough heads and stems, I could make a circlet that I placed atop my sister’s blonde hair turning her into a wood nymph.

The unruly tangle of loganberries by the back fence was where I helped my mother pick the fruit for pies on Sundays – fat, conical berries that slid off to reveal their creamy cores and sometimes squished shocking, blood-red on my fingers when too ripe. If I could not resist and popped one in my mouth, I immediately spat it out again – far too sour to eat unless sugared. I knew this, but always hoped for sweet not sour. The long canes arched outwards creating a dark tunnel underneath. Each evening my father would take the family dog there just as it was getting dark and talk quietly to him. “Go on – in you go”. The dog would sniff around and often get drawn by an interesting smell that took him away from the designated spot. My father’s voice would sharpen then, “Jake, come on, do as you’re told. Have a wee”. The dog would go hang-dog and return shamefacedly to my father’s side, the sniffing beginning again. Then Jake would disappear into the shadows under the canes and a few seconds later emerge the other side. Now he was a “Good boy!” and wagged his tail to show he appreciated the praise.

MY GARDEN BEGINNINGS

The first time I owned a garden, it was at the back of a sweet, two-up, two-down cottage in a long street of Victorian houses on the outskirts of London. My then partner and I had managed to get a mortgage and this was to be our very own, first home. We had chosen the house for its situation and the fact that it had just been completely renovated by a builder so there was little to do except paint walls and buy furniture. The garden came with it, and much as we had specifically wanted outdoor space, we hadn’t a clue about how to look after a garden aside from cutting the lawn.

We had moved from rented accommodation, where one of our house-mates gardened. I would watch him out of an upstairs window, working for hours and puzzle over what, exactly, he was doing and, more importantly, why? I just couldn’t understand the attraction. Then we moved to our Victorian cottage with its 45 ft long garden and I realised I needed to learn fast if we weren’t going to end up being surrounded by a jungle. There were regular calls to my mother, so much so that she began to answer, with laughter in her voice, “Hello, gardening helpline!”. When she visited, I’d walk her round the garden and ask endless questions, “What is this shrub?”, “What could I plant that would look nice here?”, “What do I need to do with this climbing rose?”.

And so, I gradually learned, as most gardeners do, by trial and error. It’s only by making mistakes, or seeing others make them, that we begin to understand what works and what doesn’t. It’s only by growing plants ourselves that we understand how they look, how much space they take up and which are good companions for one another, both aesthetically and practically. We begin to realise that just sticking plants into dry under-nourished soil, isn’t enough to allow them to flourish. We learn that all plants have a preferred place in the garden, with the right soil, the right amount of moisture and the right level of sunshine or shade: try to grow them in a situation they don’t like and are not naturally attuned to and they will not thrive.

We learn the difference between the perennials that come up year after year, the annuals that flower once and are gone, and the trickiest of all to manage, the biennials, that look boring for their first year when roots and leaves are establishing themselves. Then, the next year, as if by magic, the flower stems shoot up and wham!, they look fabulous, filling our borders with floriferousness and we love them. But we forget that, if we don’t keep renewing the cycle, of having the rosettes of leaves settling in alongside the flowers of this year, we shall have none the next. Some of my favourite plants - foxgloves, honesty and sweet rocket, are biennial and, for all my years of growing them, I have never yet managed to maintain their fulsomeness year after year.

MY AMBITIONS GREW

By the time I began my second garden, a few streets away from my first one and double the length, I had become much more ambitious. I had visited some of the Italian Renaissance Gardens and the Châteaux de Loire at Chenonceau, Eyrignac and Villandry. I loved their formality and symmetry, the fountains at their centre and sculpted topiary that created strong structure and style. I fell in love with the intricate knot gardens and box hedging, and I wanted to pack as many of these grand ideas into my modest, suburban plot. Ridiculous I know, but I was not to be deterred!

So, I guess the answer is that, like many things in life, we come to gardening when the time is right. Some are born into it and from a young age, imitate their parents or grandparents and develop their green fingers. Others may never have had any horticultural influence or learning but find themselves with a garden that needs looking after. Then there are those who discover gardening at a time in their lives when they seek peace and solace from the concrete jungle and its fast-paced environment. However we come to it, growing things becomes a fever and grips us so that we cannot easily escape…….

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