29 March
Gardens are among my earliest memories. We had a tiny one in the first house I lived in, yet the crazy paving was a gateway to another world for me and my sister. I can still see the bricks in the wall under which we buried our hamsters and gerbils; a holocaust of pets, if memory serves me right, since they seemed to give up the fight the moment we got them home. As I got older, the gardens got bigger, yet it some ways that first one was the biggest of them all, because I was so small, and my imagination so huge. I have always loved gardens; dreamed of them, read about them, pined in my flat-dwelling days to have one of own. From my first reading of The Secret Garden, I’ve been aware of the magical and secretive natures of gardens. Big expanses of lawn don’t really do it for me, although I’ve often wished ours was a bit bigger. I like enclosed spaces, walls and hedges, twists and turns and sudden surprises. I like a garden to slowly unveil its delights.
Despite my delight in being in a garden, despite my very definite tastes and preferences, I never actually gardened until very recently. I told myself it was because I didn’t have time, because I was too impatient by nature, because I didn’t enjoy physical hard work. Yet really it was because I had no confidence; I didn’t know where to start, I was daunted by the volumes of information, the terrifying know-how of everyone else. I think I was rebelling against my Father, too, who was and is an obsessive gardener. My teenage years were spent bringing home boyfriends, and having to sulkily submit to a tour of the garden by Dad. We’d both be dying to go to the pub, but would be out there for ages, the boyfriend usually desperate to impress and trying to dredge up something – anything – to say about plants, while I would stamp my kitten heels in the gravel and pout. My sister and I must have been such a disappointment to my Dad in our teenage years; he worked so hard to be able to afford to move us out to a leafy suburb and provide us with a lovely big garden, but all we could do was yearn for the dives of London and stare out moodily at the fields.

When I did finally get my own garden, I dutifully made a few lists of what I wanted, bought a few things, then sat back and watched my husband do the work. He knows his stuff, but his heart isn’t really in it; although he is obsessed by trees and woodland, flower gardening doesn’t do it for him. Several gardens later, I suddenly stopped being a spectator, an appreciator, and found my place in the garden. It really was sudden; a friend bought me a plant, R was away, I had to do something with it. So I planted it, gingerly and full of trepidation. The smell of the wet earth overwhelmed me; it really was a Proust and the madeleines moment – my childhood came flooding back. I was hooked. This was only a couple of years ago, and I have since become as obsessive as my father. R was suspicious at first, knowing my propensity for sudden passions, and knowing also that they often don’t last long. This has me gripped though, and if I’m not outside with the children, I’m searching fervently through books of gardening lore and plant encyclopedias. The garden and I are still shy with one another, however; I’m still learning, still not entirely sure of myself, still making a mistake here, a faux pas there. I’m discovering it’s secrets, what grows best where, what’s beautiful but not very showy, what starts out with a great display but turns out to be all fur coat and no knickers, as my Gran would say. And slowly, slowly, I’m creating a garden. My Dad is with me, of course, occasionally in person, often in spirit. I’m amazed, actually, at how much I already knew, how much I must have absorbed sub-consciously whilst stroppily following my Dad around his garden. It felt like coming home, handling that first patch of wet earth. My Grandad is in my garden too, whispering in my ear at odd moments, reminding me of plants I’d long forgotten. My Grandad’s garden … that stole my heart at the tender age of four or five. I dream of it often, and try to recreate it, although my garden resolutely goes its own way. It wasn’t big, just a typical cottage garden, flowers and produce all jumbled up together, at the back of an ordinary miner’s house in a pit village. Those plants were the sun and air to my Grandad, and I caught fragments of that love as a small child, not understanding devotion, but recognising it nevertheless.

I will probably outgrow this garden, at some point. It’s never been quite big enough for the house, and it already annoys me that there isn’t room for a decent vegetable patch. I grow some garlic and onions, a few carrots, and tomatoes and strawberries all mixed up with the flowers, as my Grandad would have done, but it would be nice to have more. I’ll save my herb garden for another blog; herbs have always been a passion of mine, I always had some in pots, long before I started ‘proper’ gardening, and they come first in this garden too. They’re slightly separate from the main garden, for me, though, bound up as they are with medicinal and culinary uses, and occupying a different place n my heart.

There have been times recently when I’ve stood out in my garden on a summer’s night, under a slither of moon, bathed in fragrance, and thought that maybe I’m creating an earth poem in honour of my Dad and my Grandad, both of whom, oddly, also took suddenly to gardening in their middle years, having shown no interest before. Other times I’ve thought I’m doing it simply for myself, because my life was ready for this passion. I’m still jealous, sometimes, of other people’s knowledge, and shy when talking about successes. I’m too aware of my own inexperience, and get frustrated and impatient with reversals, or lack of progress. But I’m still in the first flush of new love, and I’m already planning our future.