Mat the cat is no more, the grey shadow has come to rest, the voles and shrews may sing and play, but we are sad.

A Contrary Gardener - End of Year Thoughts

"There's Rosemary, thats for remembrance, pray you love remember, and there is Pancies, thats for thoughts". Ophelia

It is the time of year to ponder awhile and collect my thoughts as we draw closer to the shortest day and the turning of the old year. I have been stirring around memories of gardens and plants prompted by the recent death of a family cat who was very much part of my first 'proper' garden in Wiltshire.

A garden often comprises 'rememberences of things past' as well as its vibrant present and the promise of seasons to come. Plants may remind us of our parents, grandparents, relatives and friends. Some plants may physically have come from other gardeners and gardens; a glimpse of others brings back a sense of past times. The green flowered Daphne laureola reminds me of a particular Wiltshire lane I used to walk down on a Saturday morning in spring, a million miles away from weekday work and London.

I have strong memories of certain plants from my grandmother's London garden. Even today I am not fond of Jasminum nudiflorum as I associate it with the old tangled dusty mass which gloomed in murky shade, [which has nothing to do with my feelings for my grandparents!]. The front garden comprised gritty concrete and paving which made up paths and small borders. In spring they were filled with blue muscari whose leaves ramped and flopped everywhere. Since then I have tended to dismiss muscari as 'weedy', but I am changing my opinion to accommodate the pale blue 'Valerie Finnis', and the bi-leaved M.latifolium with its funny little topknot.

A scrubby red flowering currant [Ribes sanguineum] we used to hide in, marked the boundary of one corner of the garden, and a whiff of the odd scent takes me back over 30 years. I can't say I generally find them appealing, they are in the 'why bother with them' category alongside common privet, the 'Snowberry' [Symphorocarpus albus] and Leycesteria formosa, amongst others.There are a few ornamental flowering currants that I might accommodate, R sanguineum 'White Icicle' is one, a crisp white and very showy form; R. laurifolium has low spreading growth and punchy green flower panicles. I will most likely find room for Ribes odoratum or 'Buffalo Currant' from N.America as I grew it in my first garden. It has airy suckering growth and scented yellowy flowers in April/May. R x gordonianum an offspring of the 'Buffalo Currant' and R. sanguineum has a gold tint to the red flowers which gives it an added something in the right location.

One of the pleasantest plant memories of my grandmother's garden were the really gnarly old Hybrid Tea rose bushes with their upright inelegant growth and huge wrapped blooms. I prefer the softer forms and older roses but I can appreciate Hybrid Tea's, in other people's gardens! I smile to myself and think of my gran when passing a local garden in the summer where they have a few old stalwarts in those not quite right colours that some Tea's display.

My grandparents 'vegetable' garden was mostly given over to fruit. There were old pear trees that produced pears with tough frog coloured skin and hard flesh however long they were kept. The sharp, scaly bark on the trunks was unforgiving of children's knees when climbing. Pears however are stunning when in the full rush and froth of cream cupped flowers, and with names to conjure with such as 'Fondante D'Automne', Doyenneé de Boussoch and 'Winter Nelis' they may perhaps be forgiven and I yet tempted.

I will always associate blue ageratum with my Norwegian grandmother. The blue powderpuffs seemed so exotic when I was a child and as far as I remember my mother never grew them. My grandfather grew a lot of vegetables so other summer memories include stuffing my mouth with mangetout and raspberries and then climbing the cherry tree to get at the plump cream blushed cherries. Other pleasures included the frisson added by the light crunch of grit encountered when biting into freshly pulled carrots and helping dig potatoes for dinner, wiggling bare toes through the warm newly turned sandy soil to reveal stragglers and strays. I grow potatoes for summer eating and still get a kick out of digging them up and ferretting around with my hands to reveal more from the black Bath earth [although I don't use my feet any more!].

Memories of the main childhood garden my parents planted are more fragmentary. This may be because I spent more time in the surrounding countryside which has left a stronger impression; the slightly spooky poplar wood which had a stream braiding through it, a water filled old air raid shelter or 'pill box' at its centre, and which was awash with snowdrops early in the year, somehow suiting the melancholy mood of the place; or 'Springy Wood' which as its name suggests, had a series of ponds filled with newts and was hazed with sappy, scented bluebells in May.

I had my own bit of garden as a child but I can't say I enjoyed it that much, it was more fun popping the pods on the 'Himalayan Balsam' which had taken over an adjoining patch. A bearded iris does stand out in my mind's eye, I remember a gorgeous russet brown one, the effect akin to a mallards wing. There is something quite luxurious about bearded iris. Other memories from the Leicestershire garden include the distinctive herby, peppery smell of crushed walnut leaves and the sweet scented flash of orange azaleas which were planted in a round bed by the house.

Lily of the Valley, Convallaria majalis [Liljekonvall ] has a strong association for my mother who still grows it in her garden, it reminds her of her birthdays in June and as a child going into the woods to pick bunches. Lily of the Valley is not for the faint hearted gardener as it pops-up all over the place, it is however satisfying picking large posies of those alabaster flowers which she does and I am sometimes allowed to do. There are pink and double flowered forms as well as cultivars with variegated leaves, but the 'common' one is still perhaps the most attractive.

My mother's childhood reminscences also involve picking fruit and vegetables from her grandparents gardens. The small deep rounded woven basket with a high handle that has been around her house for years, she told me recently as she gave it to me to pick cherry tomatoes that she was handed as a child when her grandmother wanted her to gather currants and raspberries from the garden.

Picking fruit and vegetables seems to 'stick' in the memory, I suppose it has to do with summer and the sense of completion brought on by approaching autumn and 'gathering-in'. A friend quite recently lost both her parents within a short space of each other. They loved their garden, and her father grew a lot of vegetables; her mother bottled, pickled and preserved the results to be savoured during the winter months. This summer my friend was determined to grow vegetables and favourite flowers in her parents garden again. Her tomatoes, beetroot, radishes and pickling cucumbers were abundant, and as I can attest, very tasty! The growing, planting and harvesting re-connected her to fond and happy memories.

A while ago I had an email correspondent who was desperate to grow again a plant her mother and grandmother had grown. We finally worked out it was achimenes, 'The Hot Water Plant', and now she knew what she was looking for could grow again plants that linked her to her past. In my parents current garden there are a number of plants directly associated with my father's parents, in particular a herbaceous peony that has been handed down from my scottish great-grandmother [granny's paeony]; a blue small flowered azalea [granny is flowering] and a scented viburnum grown from a cutting [grandpa is flowering]. There is a feeling of comfort and continuity in having small [or perhaps large] treasures that remind one of people still with us and those long gone.

Whenever we plan and plant a garden we rarely do it without some part of us being influenced by memories and associations. Our gardens and the way we relate to them provide a tangible link to the past as well as promise for the future.

References:

Shrubs [1989] Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix

Bernwode Plants Catalogue - Pears

Decemberr 2003

@Kari's garden 2002 - 2003