Southland
Gardening is often a solitary pursuit. It may be that some gardeners like it that way. Being alone in the garden seems to suit most of us.
Robert Guyton welcomes visitors.
For some of us though, solitary times are becoming fewer and fewer as time goes by. For me, the culprits are grandchildren, bless their gorgeous souls. I’ve several now and having spent many wonderful days introducing them to the special world of a forest garden, they like it there and want to share gardening time with me.
Every grandparent who has children visit their garden will know what I mean when I say what a mixed blessing that can be. It’s delightful to have the air filled with their small talk and commentaries, but not so rewarding when their tiny feet beat a path through the middle of your justsprouted broad bean patch. Children are not restrained by convention, especially when they don’t know any of them yet, and wander at will and pick whatever takes their fancy.
“What’s this, Granddad? Is it ripe? Can I eat it?”
“You might as well,” I say with my inner voice. “I can’t reattach it to the tree.”
Many an unripe peach or nectarine has been untimely plucked from a low-hanging branch within grandchild reach, but it’s as natural a pruning as that done by the wood pigeons and strong winds, so I don’t really mind.
Grandchildren can be a help in the garden to about the same degree a puppy can help keep your carpet clean.
Grandchildren planting seedlings or sowing seeds in the garden has much the same return, in material terms; your crop will be reduced as a result of letting the two-year-old cast peas, push in beans or scatter carrot seed, but the rewards for having those young gardeners work with and alongside a mature gardener are great.
It’s really the time “lost” by having little people at your side and under your feet in the garden that’s foremost in the minds of grandchild-minding grand-gardeners; they don’t stick at tasks for very long, preferring a seemingly random work programme that involves a little of what we might consider constructive activity and great dollops of mucking around with watering cans, mud, sticks and plant pots, wheelbarrows and gumboots.
But it’s not only the very young who change your status from alone to accompanied.
Older friends call in at which point gardening – be that forking up potatoes or planting sweetcorn – becomes sitting on the veranda with tea, coffee or cider, depending upon the level of respectability of the visitor and the time of day. Work rates plummet while discussions are had, progress in the garden is assessed and birds watched.
It’s kind of like applying fertiliser to the plants, I tell myself, again with my inner, only-I-can-hear voice; these conversations and periods of silent gazing feed the mind of the gardener, providing a chance to reflect, explain yourself and garner ideas and assessments from minds other than your own.
Sometimes, they bring plants or news of a shrub or tree they’ve seen that looks as though it might be easy to propagate, so they’re adding to the garden in that way too, and if enough cider flows, promises to bring cuttings from those plants at their next visit can be extracted.
Between the old and the young come the young adult visitors.
These include sons and daughters, their friends and partners, young folk from England, Austria, Japan and France who just want to experience the Way of the Forest Gardener, so I set them to work collecting firewood from the hazel coppice; planting hosta and burdock grown from seed, and potted up earlier in expectation of such an opportunity; pricking out poroporo and bronze fennel from trays in the nursery; and a host of other straightforward, not-too-difficult tasks that will keep them busy and allow me to tackle more complex jobs, or ones I want to do myself.
Their presence in the garden is much appreciated but does mean I have to at least try to brush my beard into an acceptable form, wear trousers that do stay up, and T-shirts that have been through the washing machine at least relatively recently.
Working solo in the garden is a pleasure but so too is sharing the joy with others. The trick is to fully appreciate whichever of the two situations you find yourself in and not be wishing for the other.
In any case, as we get older, and our hearing and eyesight fails more and more, even when we’ve got company, it’ll seem as though it’s just us there. At least until you feel the tug of tiny hands on your trouser leg, or feel your gumboot fill up with the contents of your watering can.