Meet Marion - the 100-year-old gardener
'If you love gardening you find a way, don’t you?' We meet 100-year-old Marion Jones, who still gardens every day with a spring in her step
Time marches ever onward and, when it comes to quality of life – and quantity of fun had – it’s approach that counts. And, for Marion Jones, moving to a sheltered housing scheme in central Hereford in 2006 represented not so much a narrowing of horizons, as a whole new world of gardening possibilities. Having just celebrated her 100th birthday, Marion is brimming with optimism and good humour. And although she’s the scheme’s oldest resident, she's not about to let anything get in her way.
Brought up in a tiny village in Cumbria, country girl Marion spent the war in the Women’s Timber Corps outside Machynlleth,
North Wales, walking sometimes several hours a day to get to the woods. “When I was 90 I bought a computer and wrote a book about my experiences in the Timber Corps!” she reveals. She has also explored her family history extensively, tracing parts of it as far back as 1384. “I’ve certainly seen some changes. When I was a child, every garden was vegetables – you did it to eat – with maybe just a few flowers in between.”
ON TO PASTURES NEW
Great Western Court is owned by the Railway Housing Association, which also celebrates its centenary this year, and Marion has no regrets about moving from her large family home and garden. “When we got there in 1969 my husband wasn’t really interested in gardening,” she recollects. “I had to knuckle down and make it my own. But in the end, it was what made me decide to move. I got someone in to help me, but they didn’t do things like I wanted and I wasn’t getting any satisfaction from it.”
But leaving the plot that she had tended for many years still proved a wrench. “I found I was grieving for my garden so I asked the manager if I could do some gardening here,” she continues. “And he said ‘yes, if you don’t touch the hedges around the borders.’”
A glance out of the window reveals precisely no hedges, which were quietly eroded as Marion got into her stride, but a lot of flowers. Several other residents followed her example, enthusiastically supported by current Scheme Manager Hilary Lewis, who has helped them establish a communal tomato patch; this operates as an informal Pick Your Own, with the surplus used to make chutney for fundraising.
Marion’s view is an explosion of bright yellows and reds and the little plot gets almost daily attention, as she potters around moving taller plants to the back
and arranging everything to her liking. “Plants are happier when they are plonked!” she laughs, hoiking out an errant weed and insisting that I help myself to some plants to take away in a party bag.
The garden is packed with annuals and a few perennials that are divided, moved and given away. “They think I’m a bit mad,” she admits, “but I grow my own plants where possible. Garden centres are so expensive! I’m quite haphazard, really – if I see something I like, I bend down and take a cutting. I can’t remember the last time I bought a plant!”
TRIAL AND ERROR
Continuing to garden when you’re 100 years old is not all plain sailing, but Marion is undaunted. “Digging is impossible now as, if I lift up one foot, I’ll just topple over! So I have a kneeler which has handles on either side and that helps me get back up. If you love gardening you find a way, don’t you?”
And while the little hand fork can only dig down so far, that’s the least of her concerns. “What does irritate me is that I like my edges neat, and that really needs a spade. If you do it with a trowel you never get it completely straight.”
Watering is also a challenge but, again, initiative wins the day. “I’ve got a wagon and I put the watering can into it and take it to where I’m working,” she explains, cheerfully. Marion’s 100th birthday present from her friends at the scheme was a smart slate plaque for her garden, engraved with her name. But, for such a keen gardener, is this little patch of floral sunshine enough space? She pauses, “Well, common sense tells me that it’s enough,” she says, finally.
Back inside, her kitchen windowsill is stacked with cuttings and plants. “I take the seeds from the echinacea and foxgloves and this year I grew too many marigolds. I’ll learn next year if I’m still here,” she says, picking up a pot of failed busy Lizzie cuttings and looking at it slightly ruefully. “I’m a trialand-error gardener. Not everything works, but I have to try. Even at my age I’m looking forward to spring!”