Tower and Town, November 2022

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What Does Your Garden Say About You?

Penelope Lively poses this question in her book Life in the Garden. It prompted me to reflect on my own horticultural efforts. My front garden might indicate someone with big ideas without the dedication to follow it through. It began as a three point design centred on acanthus and hebes planted on a grid. The acanthus plants are still there but in various states of decay while two of the hebes have died and been replaced with daphnes, leaving gaps populated by forget-me-not seedlings.

This is rather shaming as my grandfather was a gardener by profession. He worked at an hotel growing fresh vegetables for the kitchen and maintaining the grounds, cheekily putting rose flowers in the lily ponds if the show of blooms was not to his liking. His own front garden was a reflection of the post war era: patriotic planting of red salvias, white alyssum and blue lobelia in geometric designs and a low privet hedge with “bobbles” sticking out of it at regular intervals which we children loved to pat to and fro. The back garden was dominated by two enormous greenhouses full of tomato plants. The smell of home-grown tomatoes always takes me back there. He was a thrifty man always conscious of the need to have enough money to feed his family; he sold his tomatoes and vegetables and flowers from his allotment to local greengrocers.

His son, my father, was also a gardener. He grew fruit and vegetables to feed the family and also found gardening an antidote to the stress of work. His garden in Dorset reflected his perfectionism: a beautiful green lawn with sweeping curves (not a regimented salvia in sight) and weed free flower beds. He preferred my siblings and me to go to the recreation ground to play rather than whacking balls into the roses!

Returning to my own garden and venturing behind the house I think my grandfather would have been more impressed by the back garden where there has been some sustained hard work. The raised beds have produced a good crop of broad beans, potatoes and mange tout, sweet corn and even a couple of squash. I fed the pot plants and they flourished, especially the dahlias which are a delight. As a child I did not like dahlias. I thought the colours were harsh, found their smell strange and, as I often saw them at harvest festivals, associated them with the onset of cold weather. But now I think they are glorious, from huge peach coloured Penhill Watermelon to the eight slender folded petals of Honka Fragile and all the others in between. My garden hints that I can change my mind! What does yours say about you?

Sarah Bumphrey