Lighting up the Letters page!
I JUST had to show off my beautiful mimosa. It’s about nine years old, lighting up the garden every February. My aim a long time ago was to have something to look at in bloom every week/month; trees or flowers, helped a great deal with advice from AG, so thank you for the inspiration. Pat Coomer, Hornchurch, Essex
WHEN I was a child nanny’s garden was always so beautiful. She grew all of her bedding plants from seed and the flower beds were a blaze of colour. On Boxing Day every year, her favourite place to be is in the greenhouse sowing the begonia seeds and starting to get ready for the moment when she can start planting.
We are a big family and the garden was an important part of family life with games of rounders at the weekends and hours spent on the tyre swing hanging from the fir tree.
Wendy says
Thank you Pat for all your wonderful contributions over the years to the Letters page.
We have a surprise for you! Your granddaughter Abi has been in touch and I’m sure all our readers would like to join us in wishing you a very Happy 90th Birthday. We hope you enjoyed your day on 17 March, here’s Abi’s letter
In the summer, one of our jobs was to run to the bottom of the garden to the tomato greenhouse to see if there were any red ones, the smell and taste of warm, fresh tomatoes takes me back there even now.
Nanny used to run a business called Pat’s Plants which provided plants for restaurants, estate agents and banks. A lot of the fresh foliage came from her garden, we would go to the bushes at the bottom of the garden and help cut the bits she needed. Trips to the wholesalers in her van were a favourite pastime, I remember being fascinated by some of the strange decorations you could buy and being told off for poking my fingers into the Oasis blocks.
Nanny has been a regular contributor to your magazine for many years. She gets tremendous pleasure when she sees herself published – although we aren’t quite sure what to do with all those gloves! Abi Johnson via email