Monday 5th May

We grew up in a house with a garden, actually two – one in the front and a long garden mostly put down for vegetables at the back.  I can’t remember playing in the garden; the front square of grass bordered with a neat two foot six privet hedge was purely ornamental and almost every house was laid out the same.  But out back garden was our food larder, at least half of it was potatoes, then there were carrots and green beans, cabbages, sprouts and lettuce, not forgetting tomatoes, beetroot and radish and onions.  There was a vegetable market in the town every Thursday but it was only in late winter when we had run out of potatoes and greens that my mother would go there for essentials.

I have never really had a vegetable garden, my attempts at growing veg have been half-hearted and resulted in a very meagre crop if any.  My whole attitude to gardening is very much like that.  I am really a fair-weather gardener and more often than not only tackle it when it is getting really overgrown and in desperate need of hacking back.  Then it is a mad four hours or so of lopping snipping raking and carting bags and bags to the dump.

At my last house there was an area right at the back which never got cleared, in fact it became the dumping ground for grass and cutting and branches and twigs.  Then about twice a year I would have a bonfire and burn all of the wood, causing masses of smoke even when I bought an incinerator and tried to do the thing properly it was thick black smoke pouring from the chimney.

But I do believe that even for lazy gardeners like me gardens are important.  They re-connect us, especially us city folk, with nature.  There is a sense of well-being only found in the tranquility of a garden, a real feeling of achievement if things survive and thrive and flower year after year.  I pity all these modern young people in these expensive high rise flats with only a tiny balcony and a few paltry pots to cultivate, but sadly at least here in London this is becoming the norm; all we see everywhere is so-called luxury tower blocks rising up on every bit of spare ground; when the councils built them years ago nobody wanted to live in them at all.  Everyone wanted a little semi with a garden.