My Childhood Garden Part III

A Memory of Shamley Green.

When we first moved into The Croft, as the house was called, access to the front door was gained by walking up a narrow slopping path up and along the grassy bank towards the wooden gate. The property along with others along Hullbrook Lane had been built back from the roadside on a raised bank. In time, my father decided this was not ideal and set about the enormous task of digging out a driveway leading down to the lane. The excess earth he used to build up the bank at the front into which were grown soil-retaining shrubs and conifers. This was a labour of love, as every shovelful of earth was dug by hand and transported in the wheelbarrow to various sites around the garden as well as onto the front bank. The retaining brick walls each side of the driveway eventually became covered with trailing plants which produced an abundance of white flowers in the early summer. A beautiful white magnolia tree grew at the top of the driveway to the left whose flowers I never grew tired of smelling the sweet perfume from or touching the soft silky petals. Before the drive was dug, I had had a small patch of garden that my father let me use at the base of that magnolia in which cornflowers of many colours grew from seeds I planted. A line of tall cypressus trees lined the now concreted front path that led towards the front door.

In the front garden was a flowerbed in which my mother had planted one of her favourite flowers, dahlias. The only frustration experienced with these gorgeous blooms is that earwigs equally favour them. These small scorpion-like insects have a habit of taking up residence within the curled petals, so a hearty sniff is not recommended! A variegated leafed shrub grew beneath the front room bay window, which produced pink flowers in the spring along with the many different coloured crocuses, snowdrops and daffodils.

To the side of the house, before an extension was built, was a shrubbery. Within this shrubbery were a purple magnolia, peach and plum trees and various other shrubs in profusion together with two large camellia bushes that my Mother adored. One produced red flowers, the other white. However, over the years their root systems became entwined resulting in rogue blooms that showed the opposing camellias colour. As time went by, more and more of the white camellia's flowers would blossom with pale pink flowers with occasional darker pink stripes, whereas the red camellia bush would bring forth red blooms with odd white stripes on the petals, much to the amusement of my parents. In fact, these shrubs became quite a talking point amongst friends and neighbours who witnessed the result of this strange love affair. These two camellias were indeed special, as no one to our knowledge had camellia bushes with flowers like we had on ours!

In time my father bought a large number of stones, which he then laid into a semi-circular crazy paving design making a patio area at the back of the house. The word 'patio' he hated, and insisted it was a backyard! As the garden gently sloped upwards, this necessitated a low brick retaining wall was needed to edge and hold the lawn in place and finish off the patio of paving stones. Again, hours and hours of work went into this using, of course, cement made with our garden's own sand which was blended into the mix.

The raised back lower lawn was where the old Cox's apple tree stood in the centre and off one thick branch my father hung a rope and wooden seated swing for my younger sister. Here the story must be told of the time my sister was happily swinging when suddenly one of the ropes snapped resulting in her flying backwards through the air into the flowerbed behind. Although she was a little bruised and scratched from the rosebush thorns, the whole scene had looked so funny and if only had been captured on film would still to this day make her laugh I'm sure - plaits in the air, a cry and then seeing her seated amongst the delphiniums, lupins and rose bushes some six feet behind still makes me smile! Lupins I still retain a fondness for, remembering so well their unusual peppery scent. The delphiniums grown were of every shade of blue imaginable and scattered in amongst these tall flowers, snapdragons grew. A favourite pastime of my sister was to wait until a bee popped into one of the flower-heads in search of nectar and then she would hold the tube-like petals shut, giggling at the buzzing of the furious bee trapped inside. One day a bee won his revenge and she was stung. She never played that game again!

My father constructed an intricate wooden trellis across the lower third of the back garden to divide the areas of flowers, shrubs and roses and the larger area behind where all manner of fruit, vegetables and salad plants were grown. Weaving in and out of the trellis was a vigorous climbing rose that produced double pink button-like flowers in abundance. In the centre of the trellis he constructed an archway through which the path continued in two directions.

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