Listening for Weeds

tho’ an old man I am but a young gardener

Thomas Jefferson

I’m not sure if I will ever truly claim to be a gardener. By that I mean some sort of expert, someone who actually knows what they are doing in their garden space. Gardens have a way of consigning even the most knowledgeable of its acolytes to the dunce’s seat. A certain humility is always useful as part of the toolkit. So maybe the best I can hope for is to be considered a keen gardener. Unlike others who talk and write about the subject I wasn’t blessed with a lifelong love of gardening. I can’t inveigle those who might be inclined to listen of a love of flowers as soon as I could walk and talk, of having my own miniature spade and wheelbarrow and little garden or of shadowing my father as he revealed the wonders of the relationship between man and the earth on which he walks. As a child I happily stood aside as my father coaxed orderly drills of black eyed Golden Wonders, blushing Kerr Pinks and ironic British Queen potatoes to complement his paltry wages as a forestry worker. Trailing beans scrambling up strings tied to the stone walls could not match the excitement of crossing the weir of the river that flowed by our house. I passed weed free beds of carrots, parsnips and onions without even a cursory glance. I played Cowboys and Indians (no Native Americans in those days) with my brother and interminable chases with my dog Toby, neither of whom were allowed in the crumbling walled garden space. This was mainly gardening through necessity and while I can’t point to any clear commentary by my father I often wonder about my current preference to grow flowers and leave table produce to those who know better. I passed him most fine evenings, after dinner, standing quietly and smoking in the smaller area he allocated for his real love, flowers. Any query from me about his silence and stillness was dealt with by a smirked explanation that he was listening for weeds. This was his space. He liked the solitude. He passed it to me.

In early married life the demands of working to build a career and helping to raise a family meant that gardening was relegated to the status of an unwelcome task that was squeezed in at weekends and summer evenings and of course between the all too regular showers. Weeds and grass wait for no man. Mown and edged lawns with narrow and predictable flower and shrub borders leaning against wooden fence panelling were the order of the day. Straight line predictability struggled in vain to contain plants that refused to stay in line like distracted schoolchildren at the end of play time. The weekly close cropped lawns added to the impression that the garden was under some sort of totalitarian rule. Add some white edging stones and you could be in an army camp. Weeds were ignored until they began to squeeze out the perennials. This triggered a kneeling purge to regain order like a not so good Catholic seeking forgiveness during a novena. Unfortunately these unloved plants mastery of every survival skill meant that their absence was at best temporary. My success in their containment was in direct proportion to my lack of investment in mulch or weed suppressant material. Gardening, in those days, was not a slow patient creation of mine, it was instant.  It was a job to be completed like any other. Do it once and then tinker about the edges to keep it up to speed; a bit like washing the new car on Sunday morning. Commitment of time and effort was reserved for work, family and reading. The process I would come to love in later years was sacrificed for an instant outcome. Clever colour palettes displayed at the garden centre ensured I made repeating purchases of plants nearing the end of their annual display; a certain recipe for return visits. Perennials were preferred to annuals with their promise of yearly return; obviously they were expected to do this without much help from me. Rain and sun should have been enough. Regular feeding was an irregular event on my non-existent gardening calendar. Allowing plants to die back naturally didn’t satisfy my leaning towards tidiness. Once green started to fade to brown it was removed depriving the plant of essential nutrients for the next growing season. The practice of deadheading to lengthen the flowering period was still a mystery to be revealed. Propagation of favourite plants by cuttings was a trade secret reserved for the much watched experts on Gardener’s World with their massive, multifaceted and ever changing  gardens, their cold frames and greenhouses and, in my cynical view, their off camera army of workers. Surely no one person could maintain control over such a space.

When a plant died, I replaced it, usually with something else. It was obviously the plant’s fault if it failed to thrive. If in doubt, revert to the time honoured practice of blaming the victim.  Little thought was given of their suitability to the soil of our alkaline, chalky Eden. Detailed consideration of the relative height of my purchases was rarely evident, no thought given to what they might look like and what space they might require three years from now. The invasive abilities of some plants once released from the constraints of the plastic flowerpot were studiously ignored in my rush to fill the space. Plants were arranged next to each other to satisfy the orderly lines of their new home. All this was fronted by a rectangular patio making a poor attempt to link the house with the rest of our mortgaged piece of the planet.

My wife was the only one who ever looked at the garden and came up with development suggestions. And so I found myself constructing an arbour, a strategically placed love seat and wooden planters. I gave regular airings to the selection of rusting tools in the small shed without really applying myself mentally beyond the immediate outstanding task. I toiled in the garden space but could not really call myself a gardener.

The final clue to my attitude to gardening activity was an almost total lack of effort on my part to remember the names and characteristics of what I was planting. I have never tried to display my credentials as a gardener by trotting out complex Latin names. I had done enough of that at boarding school where it was a compulsory subject, where daily Mass was recited by the priest with his back to us undeserving supplicants and plain chant Palestrina (sung in Latin) dominated the choir which I loved. I have never applied this studious ignorance of the basics in any other aspect of my life. The only positive was that each spring was    essentially a new revelation. Because of my lack of attention beyond planting and weeding I could never claim any similarity to a Groundhog type of experience or indeed allow boredom to flourish among the weeds.

If the nurturing of my love of gardening was delayed into my forties then did nature hold the necessary data in my genetic makeup to allow it to blossom when conditions were favourable like daffodils bursting through after the last frosts? Despite the economic need to garden my father was a good gardener. Things grew for him. He knew how and when to plant, tend, feed and harvest. Armed with fork, spade and a barrow load of last year’s compost he could turn a barren plot into something beautiful and productive. It was in the genes. His father, with whom I share my name, was a head gardener in one of the old English estates. He oversaw the management of their copious gardens and their exacting standards when it came to the display of the manor house surrounds. At home he managed a small plot which he called the haggart and grew vegetables and flowers that were the envy of his neighbours confined in the row of tied estate cottages. He, like my father, supported the adage that the more people you allow to work in your garden the less it becomes yours. I have inherited that trait. My wife says I just like being in charge. I can’t disagree but where gardens are concerned being in charge does not necessarily being in control.

So nature must have made a not insignificant contribution to my enthusiastic late coming to gardening. Looking back now I can only identify one overarching reason why this natural bent lay dormant for so long; why it did not rear its head until the time when it would be more expected that I was having a midlife crisis. Maybe it saved me from having one or is it possible that this was my midlife crisis?

Someone once said that Time is nature’s way of stopping everything happening at once. This was what was missing. My time was taken up elsewhere, allocated among the rest of life’s many demands. I used some of that time working on the garden; my love of gardening would not, could not grow until I gave the garden enough time to work on me.

An excerpt from the next book Heaven In Earth by Bill Griffin