I saw HappyMouffetard's post on three generations of garden lovers, and our comments to each other have started me thinking and wondering.
My maternal grandfather had the most amazing garden. Outside the back door was a large raised fish pond and rockery. He had a greenhouse, and loads of conifers and fuchsias all the way down the patio and onto the lawn. Surrounding the lawn were his prize-winning roses. Beyond the garden and across the footpath, he had a vegetable garden, and another fish pond. Behind the hedge was a full-sized tennis court, and the other side of that he had a large field in which he kept peafowl, bantams, Muscovy ducks and geese (including a gander called Horace, who was pure avian evil). I'm sure Mum or my aunt have photos. I must get copies sometime.
I terrorised Grandpa's garden, and my own parents' garden. I ate gravel (early geologist checking for grain size?), and I picked flowers. Dad called me Attila the Flower-Picker. I never picked the roses, but pansies were fair game. Grandpa must have despaired. And then for years I showed no interest in plants or gardening whatsoever, except for the several successive polka-dot plants I killed while a student.
Grandpa died while I was in the USA in the first and only year of an ill-fated PhD, and I only took up gardening some two and a half years later, as Mum's suggested cure for post-nuptial depression. I decided to put my own slant on the style of gardening, and the rest is history.
Mum doesn't know whether she should be thrilled that I have taken to gardening so enthusiastically, or concerned that she has created a plant-buying, seedling-propagating, palaeontologically accurate monster. But she thinks the garden looks very nice, and sometimes more mature than her own (to be fair, she's got eight gazillion times the space to fill with plants!).
But what would Grandpa think of Jurassic Park? I think he would approve of the layout. Would he like the palms and cycads? I don't think so (and he'd be simultaneously horrified and amused at my attempt to grow a Sequoiadendron in a pot). There wouldn't be enough colour for him though. No way. Not even with the blue pots and the blue lights, and the Leucospermum with its scarlet ribbons and the fluorescent Camellia blooms.
Grandpa embraced bright colours and put them next to each other, displaying flowers in all their hideous, garish, breathtakingly striking glory. His roses, and the bedding plants elsewhere in the garden, were a kaleidoscope. I'm sad that he never knew that I followed in his footsteps, at his own daughter's suggestion, but I hope from spending my early years watching him at work that some of his knowledge rubbed off on me.
My maternal grandfather had the most amazing garden. Outside the back door was a large raised fish pond and rockery. He had a greenhouse, and loads of conifers and fuchsias all the way down the patio and onto the lawn. Surrounding the lawn were his prize-winning roses. Beyond the garden and across the footpath, he had a vegetable garden, and another fish pond. Behind the hedge was a full-sized tennis court, and the other side of that he had a large field in which he kept peafowl, bantams, Muscovy ducks and geese (including a gander called Horace, who was pure avian evil). I'm sure Mum or my aunt have photos. I must get copies sometime.
I terrorised Grandpa's garden, and my own parents' garden. I ate gravel (early geologist checking for grain size?), and I picked flowers. Dad called me Attila the Flower-Picker. I never picked the roses, but pansies were fair game. Grandpa must have despaired. And then for years I showed no interest in plants or gardening whatsoever, except for the several successive polka-dot plants I killed while a student.
Grandpa died while I was in the USA in the first and only year of an ill-fated PhD, and I only took up gardening some two and a half years later, as Mum's suggested cure for post-nuptial depression. I decided to put my own slant on the style of gardening, and the rest is history.
Mum doesn't know whether she should be thrilled that I have taken to gardening so enthusiastically, or concerned that she has created a plant-buying, seedling-propagating, palaeontologically accurate monster. But she thinks the garden looks very nice, and sometimes more mature than her own (to be fair, she's got eight gazillion times the space to fill with plants!).
But what would Grandpa think of Jurassic Park? I think he would approve of the layout. Would he like the palms and cycads? I don't think so (and he'd be simultaneously horrified and amused at my attempt to grow a Sequoiadendron in a pot). There wouldn't be enough colour for him though. No way. Not even with the blue pots and the blue lights, and the Leucospermum with its scarlet ribbons and the fluorescent Camellia blooms.
Grandpa embraced bright colours and put them next to each other, displaying flowers in all their hideous, garish, breathtakingly striking glory. His roses, and the bedding plants elsewhere in the garden, were a kaleidoscope. I'm sad that he never knew that I followed in his footsteps, at his own daughter's suggestion, but I hope from spending my early years watching him at work that some of his knowledge rubbed off on me.
0 comments:
Post a Comment