A magical garden
A magical garden
The leads for the plant stories come from all kinds of places. Alison and I met, aged 11, on our first day at Northgate School and remained firm friends throughout our school days and beyond. Lives, careers, children take you in many different directions and you don’t necessarily know the ins and outs of each other’s jobs. But when I started this podcast and Alison and I were sharing coffee, she said ‘I think I know where you might find a plant story! And if you don’t find a plant story, you will love to visit this place.’ And so it was that we fixed an afternoon for both of us to go to meet Diana Boston, whose Manor House is in Alison’s village. As soon as we parked and walked into the garden and looked across at the topiary we knew we had a plant story. The coronation of the new King was about to happen and here we were looking at topiary crowns and orbs shaped for his mother’s coronation back in 1953.
Alison had done Diana’s tour of the 11th century house many times with friends and knew that there was also another very poignant story in this garden. It takes you back to the second world war and Diana’s mother-in-law, Lucy Boston. The airmen from the local base would picnic in the garden and she put on musical evenings in the house. So this meant we had a plant story and an Offshoot. Wandering around the garden with Diana is just a delight, her incredible knowledge and love of the garden but I also found myself wanted to know more about Lucy. How had she planned the garden, did she see herself as a ‘garden designer’? Where did the beautiful roses and stunning iris come from in a time before we had the internet so could research plants to our hearts content?
So I hope you enjoy listening to this week’s Offshoot. Thanks to Alison for the original story and Diana for her warm welcome. (oh and she has a small table selling plants and confession time, I have bought plants on both visits!)
When I made programmes for Radio 4, I know I would have faded ‘Abide with Me’ after 20 seconds so I hope you will forgive me for playing it in full. I sat in the room where all those airmen had sat over 80 years ago, knowing this was the record most requested at the end of those musical evenings. It felt very special and I believe that through the power of audio, I can share that with you.
A quick update on the reading progress. I have temporarily swapped books with a friend who lives in North Norway and who has studied polar exploration. So she is reading the Inuit essay in This Book is a Plant (see last week’s blog post) and I have got a book called Up Here - The North at the Centre of the World, which is essays about the Arctic. A connection between a couple of essays in the two books is leading to the next book on the list - I’ll explain more next week!