Blogetty Blog 17: A Primrose Path.

‘Harbinger’ is the word used to describe the sign-bearers that tell us spring is imminent. I had to look it up on Wiki for it is an uncommon word and I have used it with no idea what its derivation might be. Webster says it dates from early Middle Ages (1125-1175) and means a herald, ‘one that goes before’. ‘Harbinger of Spring’ is the common name of a small herb found in Illinois and Europe, but it could equally be applied to primroses.

In the first weeks of February my garden begins to shrug itself free from the shackles of winter, and the primroses and primulas planted beside the path leading down to the shore of Discovery Bay unfurl crowded buds of pink, rose, scarlet, deep crimson, blue, white and yellow. They have spread in self-seeding clumps to form a striking carpet. Behind them viburnum tinus is also ready to perform. I like it a lot and think its glossy evergreen leaves and contrasting cream flower are greatly undervalued. It’s a trouble-free ‘good-doer’ at my latitude, an excellent recommendation in itself.

I have greatly enjoyed the opportunities to make gardens in several situations. My first serious attempt was at Noah’s Ark in Newtown on the Isle of Wight in the early fifties. The house had been the village pub and was fortunately available for rent after a recent restoration by the National Trust. It took its name from its former inn-sign featuring a lion looking out of a boat.

In the Middle Ages Newtown had been one of the principal Island towns with a harbor providing access to the Solent, a Norman charter and a free market. When its harbor silted up the estuary was converted to a wide area of shallow pans behind a seawall for collecting salt. Later it retained its importance as a ‘Rotten Borough’ and the privilege of returning two Member of Parliament elected by twenty three burgesses until it was abolished in the Great Reform Act of 1832.

When we arrived the village had shrunk into a minute hamlet shaded by Tennyson’s “immemorial elms”, which tragically all died after the arrival of elm disease. I once received a letter with a US stamp addressed simply to Cyril Lucas, Noah’s Ark, Isle of Wight. It is hard to believe that life could formerly be so tranquil that the principal event of the day was farmer Barton driving his dozen cows to and from milking within feet of our front door.

Our garden was a flat ¼ acre level rectangular plot enclosed by existing hawthorn hedges which offered little creative opportunity beyond two rose borders and a perennial bed in front of a vegetable plot.

After perhaps ten years when my shellfish business had become successful I was able to buy a much larger house called Dodpits – in near ruin, there were jackdaws flying in through holes in the roof – with eight acres of meadows and four of neglected formal garden.

My two daughters instantly stocked the meadows with a herd of ponies which ultimately delivered the welcome benefit of an annual crop of field mushrooms, while I had room to collect flowering shrubs and lots more roses.

Our family life suffered devastating change when my wife Sheelagh was killed in a car accident while my son Geoff and I were travelling in the USA on business. With no herald to warn us of impending tragedy the news was incomprehensible. In the careful hands of British Airways staff and crew, Geoff and I sat side by side on the flight home next day bewildered by shock and continually verging on tears.

For a while life was extremely lonely, “over” as I thought. Then after a year or two, of all unlikely events I met Vicki, a Californian twenty years my junior who owned a seaside hotel in the town of Ventnor. Her marriage to her British husband was over and she had decided to sell and return to roots back home.

We went to Brittany on holiday on the understanding – highly reluctant on my part – that it would be no more than a delightful temporary adventure and that that would be that. It was certainly that, but it was by no means that. Thirty seven years later, to the astonishment of friends and relations, but not to ourselves, we are still devotedly together. There aren’t any probabilities let alone rules when it comes to love.

The subject of this blog is gardens to which I shall return. Vicki and I enjoyed France so much that four or five years later we decided to buy a second home in the Languedoc-Rousillon region. It had two small lawns, the upper planted with three cherry trees which produced the tastiest cherries I have eaten and the lower with a swimming pool popular at night with small green frogs, who clung to its walls despite chlorination of the water. I had great fun planting hibiscus which I had always wanted to grow.

After Languedoc came Southern California. Our home in Escondido was one of a dozen spacious new houses built in a former an avocado grove. Several fruiting trees remained and the developer added three 20 foot tall palms to create an impressive entrance to a short front driveway. (They move huge trees around down there as if they are seedlings.) So it was not typical of modern Californian developments where the houses are so close together you can pass the soap from your bathroom window to the one next door.

There is nothing in nature more spectacular than a tropical flowering tree and I planted several – I won’t make a boring list of names – beyond mention of a gorgeous golden cassia, bougainvilleas, and several stunning Brugmansia or ‘angels’ trumpets’. Their memory continues to amaze.

Finally I started yet another garden when we moved to Port Townsend in the Pacific Northwest, taming a steep half acre covered in Himalayan blackberry.

The wet and mild climate permitted a return to hydrangeas and roses – one of them a hybrid I created back on the Island too precious to abandon in my moves. It flowered for the first time on the anniversary of my first dinner with Vicki, so its name, registered with UK & US Rose Societies, is ‘Rendez-Vous’.

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