We hope that readers enjoy the second article of Club members’ memories – thank you for your kind comments about the first one which appeared in the June issue of the Fowlmere & Thriplow News.
By now we are all good gardeners! We have had time during this enforced, ongoing stay-at-home period to concentrate on nurturing our plants! But cast your mind back to how different life must have been in the immediate post war years when soldiers returned home and land girls were no more: peace at last and time at last to enjoy a family life and cultivate your own piece of heaven! Club members have recorded their own memories of the 1950’s or have remembered stories related to them by their parents or grandparents.
Margaret was introduced to gardening by her mother who was a keen gardener. However, Margaret was a lazy learner who thought that ‘’gardening was for the oldies” – a view apparently held by younger people until the lockdown! – (witness the age profile of the Gardening Club!) Perhaps things will change now…….. Back to Margaret’s memories! She did learn that picking raspberries and strawberries was very rewarding! So that was her early experience of gardening in the UK on Sussex clay! Jean had a school friend whose parents were quite keen gardeners. They lived on The Ridgeway and her mother introduced her to aubrietia. She also bought Jean her first book on gardening which is still on her bookshelf. It was written by Mr. Blossom who regularly wrote a short piece in the Daily Express.
In the 50’s, Rosemary’s Dad moved the family into a new detached house with land all round. Even at the age of 7, Rosemary understood that her father had achieved one of his lifetime goals. All his life, he worked long hours to provide for his family, and Rosemary came to learn that the garden offered him a place of respite and recuperation. “The woody area at the bottom of the plot, with its makeshift tree swing, belonged to us children, but the rest of the garden was his. We could roll on the square of lawn, but woe betide us if we crushed any of the borders! Dad’s floral taste was simple: roses in the front garden and dahlias at the back. I remember discovering his grisly brown dahlia tubers overwintering in the garage. They were lying on newspaper in wooden trays like gruesome body parts. It seemed impossible that these entrails would transform into the robust, vibrant blooms that crowded the summer flowerbeds! Their colourful display gave Dad enormous pleasure as he guided visitors round or picked bright bunches of pompoms for the house.
As a child all Gwyneth remembers about gardening was picking apples by climbing the trees, – great fun – and planting bulbs which produced a wonderful show of daffodils. She tells us that her parents weren’t gardeners but they had red currant and blackcurrant bushes, and rhubarb, probably an attempt at providing extra food during the war. However, her mother-in-law was a wonderful gardener and gradually Gwyneth learnt the joys of many different plants although she admits that she never mastered the Latin names! Here is Gwyneth’s mother with their dog – a corgi called Sian, on the lawn showing a little of the wall around the garden, in autumn. Gwyneth says “You can see why my knowledge of plants is sparse.!”
Let’s give Rosemary the last words! “Dad’s real joy was his veg patch, which may have been inspired by “digging for victory” during the war. His efforts went largely unnoticed until harvest time, when we were enlisted to help. We delved into the freshly turned soil to uncover potatoes. We plucked the dangling runners and shelled peas on the patio. But the jewels were the raspberry canes; only Dad picked the fruit. Only he proudly transported the brimming Pyrex bowl into the kitchen, where, only he, boiled up a hot sugar syrup to pour over the top. Maybe Dad just had a sweet tooth or perhaps the process was to kill the little worms which he skimmed off the surface. Whatever the reason, we never ate raspberries any other way. They remained Dad’s favourite fruit to the end; mine too.”
Mary Duff