Well here I am, sometime in the very early 80s (I decline to be more exact, though it could be the very, very late 1970s), with a prize-winning sun flower (2nd).
The family garden in Winchmore Hill, North London, which thinking about it now, was a rather good garden. Dutch Elm disease did away with several mature trees that formed a substantial background to the plot, but surrounded on three sides by long gardens, the view was still of uninterrupted greenery.
Mature apples, pears and plums, a good stand of raspberry canes, the obligatory rockery and de rigueur conifers, a few roses, an inky pond and two rather substantial rendered sheds, with stained glass windows and terracotta minarets (courtesy of my father). Said sheds contained every iron my mother had ever asked him to throw away, plugless, kept for reasons I have never fathomed. The same query goes for all the spare tyres kept by the side of the house, from cars long since departed, though I do remember a very energetic exercise that turned one inside out to become an attractive planter.
Virginia creeper softened the pebbledash on the back of the house. Our black and white, bib and tucker London cat, Ching Ching, waited with teeth and claw at the end of the path by the washing line.
My mother mowed the lawn (that was all) and other gardening jobs aside, my father mulched, mostly with concrete. Small runs of steps began to sweep, lawn edging crept over grass and flower bed alike. Required reading, Concrete Quarterly dropped onto the doormat. My father could grow many things, poppies stand out in the memory, big scarlet and black affairs and I have never been successful with these princely plants. Grape vines adorned the cathedralesque sheds and an Italian neighbour made Chateau Sherbrook Gardens one year (not a great vintage).
I grew sunflowers, an oak tree from an acorn, some herbs too I think. Picked apples and pears, and raspberries from the thicket of canes, right in amongst the foliage so that the fruit revealed themselves just inches from your eye.
See the lawnmower…
Time passing, other careers. A pause for breath – What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare – and on to new pastures – gardens – though I can’t rule out pastures in future gardens.
Actually, just an excuse to post a couple of rather period photographs of me and my Mum (in a rather fetching tan one-piece trouser affair) and a little reminisce. I must give poppies another try though.
The Teddington Gardener 