A story for summer

A garden in summer

I wrote this piece as a conclusion to a book I’ve just completed about gardens and gardening. As you can see, it’s quite recent but the event described below happened over thirty years ago. Why is it important, at least to me? Well, firstly, I remember it, always a good criterion for inclusion. And, secondly, there are turning points in everybody’s life and this was one of them.

23 May 2006

Stuck indoors, I wondered, ‘Why does anybody garden? The rain pinked against the windowpane in response and outdoors sat sodden. ‘What is this urge to beautify?’ I further inquired of the snivelling garden, and ‘What’s this horticultural nurturing all about?’ And how, I further ruminated as the rain steadily swelled, does contact with the earth and the elements nourish us and the plants that live with us? Rather a lot to ask of a wet morning.

At one level, the answer came clear enough – we’re part of nature, our bodies are made of the same stuff, and it’s natural to seek the company of plants and care for them - even in the rain. But take it one step further – beyond the basic need for food – and there might just be a chance of creating a mini paradise in one’s own backyard. A redemption of what has been spoilt in this world. Could that be what it’s about? A longed-for gift, both to bestow and receive?

I was reminded of this when driving down a road in Bayswater where I lived years ago, renting a flat in an early Victorian house. Its stubby front garden had long gone under concrete and a dubious clutter of dustbins. You see them everywhere in cities – multi-occupancy houses with not a scrap of grass in sight, possibly an ancient privet hedge shedding dust, but nothing to welcome and gladden a city heart.

This house in Bayswater didn’t even sustain that old codger, the privet hedge. But we did have a landlord and he wasn’t best pleased with me.

He had reason not to be. Friends living in the flat above had left without paying the rent - but I wasn’t giving away their current whereabouts. So we had a chilly stalemate, John Best and I, my landlord quite rightly suspecting that I knew more than I would tell.

How best to restore harmony? I couldn’t see which way the signpost pointed until one morning, while sorting letters in our common hall, the top-floor tenant mentioned that our landlord liked trees. Over the next few days this seed germinated and I wrote to Mr Best suggesting that we plant a tree at the front.

With only a farewell swipe at unsatisfactory tenants who didn’t pay rent, he embraced the idea. So did my fellow house occupants. And so did the neighbours. In the shake of a leaf a VW van shot off to the local garden centre to buy a winter-flowering cherry, subscriptions for its cost came in from several quarters, and in no time at all strong men were smashing concrete. All anyone wanted me to do was greet my perspiring neighbours and discuss the finer points of whether this or that branch should point south or 10 degrees to the west.

In seeking to appease my landlord I’d unwittingly careened into a truth. Everybody wanted a tree but nobody realised that they did, if you see what I mean. Then, with the advent of the idea of Tree, everybody needed one. A tree – it was agreed by all - would bring life and grace to the house and be a quicksilver blow against concrete. In the event, this tree was more unifying than anything else I could have conjured up. A tree brought peace to our fractious house.

It’s still there, thirty years on, a bit lumpy from clumsy pruning … but there.

Of course, even then the concrete surrounded the cherry tree, the traffic still clumbered past, but the tree grew and thrived. Its white blossoms could be seen through the winter murk as one turned the corner into the road, and in the summer its leaves dappled the sun. Call me sentimental but, as the tree prospered, so did we.

Except perhaps for John Best. At length the Inland Revenue caught up with him and he had to sell the house. One way and another, we each bought a share and, one way and another, that’s how I now come to be living with my Hammersmith garden in rain or shine. In this, my birthday week, as I reflect on life and mortality, a garden is a promise fulfilled.


Postscript: as a young student in the School I gave the crux of this story as an example in my group. It was the unity that was important and the practical action that brought it into effect. Next term I was put on the horticultural team at Waterperry and stayed there for twelve years.