Another little thing

.... to shift perspective

I simply can’t remember how it happened that I got a “weekend and holiday” job as the lowest of the low at Barnsley House.  This was 1990 and Mrs Verey was at peak Mrs Verey with a Gold Medal at Chelsea Flower Show.  How on earth did I do that?  Anyway, I did and learned more from her about gardening (which is different to design …. I think) and observation of plant habit, than I did on the Practical Horticulture course I was attending. 

Tough wasn’t in it.  Really quite old school, Mrs V. However, eventually I was permitted to talk to visitors about plants, pot up and water by myself, and weed, and feed the chickens in the morning.  This was a terror, they were not nice chickens.  They looked wonderful, being rare and fluffy, but we didn’t bond.  Nevertheless, apart from appearing to be pretty, sweet little things, they produced fabulous compost. Practical.

After more time, and plant identification, and mutual besotted love (in a reserved way, be assured, not a gush in sight there) for Helen Ballard’s utterly amazing Hellebores (it was at this point I think I was allowed into the kitchen to make coffee ….), at the end of the day, in the gloaming, when the garden was silent, she would lead me into the potager (instructing all the while) and bestow salads and vegetables upon me for my supper.  An honour.  You can imagine. 

Amongst all the rare, choice plants, there, in the immaculate potager, a sweet little viola was permitted to self-seed, and somehow that was almost more pleasing than the rest.  Life progressed, and I grew things I loved, and one of the things I grew was Viola “Bowles Black” – which I would put in pots with curly leafed parsley and decorative and delicious the combination was. 

Life moved on again and I couldn’t find seeds anywhere and for years I have periodically looked and searched. And THIS very week I found a supplier and instantly ordered a packet of seeds and I can’t wait for them to arrive and be sown and have promised plants to friends and relations and if they don’t love them as much as I do …. but they will, I know,

So life has shifted a few degrees yet again, as it does, and is a little more open and settled and because I’ve found my viola, the door of the cupboard in my mind into which I had stuffed quite a lot of the things (possibly most of the things) that pleased me (labelled “I’ll do that later”) has swung open and I’ve just spotted a variegated honeysuckle growing over the wall of a neglected garden, and having spotted that rather rare plant, have stuck my nose over the wall and ….

Ummm, a plantsperson lives there.  I can tell.  The sort of person who finds a plant and thinks “where will this adorable thing do well?” and pops it in to find it’s place with the other plants.  And oddly enough mostly that method works very well.  With appropriate chat and some space.  Don’t we all?

PS I’ve also ordered white and blue sweetpea seeds. My balcony will become a bower of loveliness! I hope Mrs V would approve.