GARDENING
I’M THINKING about legacies, leafy legacies, prompted by the need to make a new will, as most of my would-be beneficiaries have themselves died since I last put pen to paper. And I’m further urged by a euphoric phone call from a close friend who had just been left a small sum of money ‘to spend on the garden’ by a recently deceased acquaintance. Acquaintance, mark you.
So we’re not talking principal bequests to the near and dear, rather helpful, enabling sums to chums or to local community projects that will suddenly find themselves with a bit of money for a few plants they might otherwise be unable to afford. And if not plants, then perhaps a garden seat, a small greenhouse or shed or – depending on one’s largesse – a resplendent folly that will recall a deceased’s name for years to come.
Modest handouts require no costly visit to the legal bods; a memorandum of intent (specifying, say, a couple of hundred pounds, or whatever is deemed appropriate) can be tucked away with an existing will or lodged with an executor who can be trusted to dole out the money after probate has been granted.
Trees have the power and longevity to engender and sustain memories of association. An oak will survive beyond many human generations but beneficiaries might also consider shorterterm alternatives: a clutch of roses, for example, where outdoor space is limited, or a sackful of bulbs that will increase in number over the years, annually bringing to mind their thoughtful provider.
The first thing my aforementioned friend did was to source a young and rather expensive ornamental tree to plant in her benefactor’s memory. As my friend is ‘getting on’ in years she wanted a specimen that would make its mark straight away; fortuitously, the sum bequeathed enabled both the plant’s purchase and the services of someone to set it in place, plus a smart label recording name and dates. She chose a Carpinus fangiana, colloquially known as the monkeytail hornbeam, a rare species from China described by one British nurseryman as having eight-inch ‘eye-catching veined, finely-toothed, dark green leaves’ and bearing long pale green catkins followed by slender midsummer flower tassels up to a foot in length. Coincidentally, I set eyes on this plant for the first time myself this year, in a connoisseur’s garden in Kent; such was its immediate impact and unparalleled exotic beauty that I decided to forgo the likelihood of an imminent windfall and rushed out to buy one for myself. Pan Global Plants at Frampton-on-severn in Gloucestershire (a mail-order nursery also open to visitors) have pot-grown 3ft-tall youngsters for around £30 each. Being grafted plants, not seed-raised ones – which would take several years to bloom – these will begin their fabulous floral pageant without delay.
Enthusiastic but impoverished gardeners wouldn’t dream of forking out such sums of money for a tree, let alone the extra cost involved if it needs to be delivered and planted by a third party. Imagine, therefore, the joy that can be spread by the simple act of leaving a few instructions that can be acted upon after the Grim Reaper has made his call. It’s a novel way to be remembered, providing too a thing of beauty that can be shared and admired by others long after both donor and recipient have gone to the Great Compost Heap in the Sky. On this dreary winter afternoon I can think of no more pleasing task than to trawl through my address book and make a list of people to whom I will direct my own leafy legacies.