Planting up a garden for nostalgia

Minis with oil leaks and how chivalry isn’t dead. It’s a random one.

Hello my dear friends, how are you?

There are some things from my youth best left in the past, think- fringes, alcopops and boys with baseball caps worn backwards. Cottage garden plants aren’t one of them. I sat in my garden last night admiring the wildness of a clematis that was dancing over my head and occasionally tickling my neck. The gravel garden up by the cottage is where I’ve really let loose and planted everything I love and have just let it get on with it, hence Jasmin and clematis are rambling in all directions and wild flowers are sprouting in the middle of the path- I simply let them be. It occurred to me as I was noticing my plants, that all of them are linked to nostalgia- Flowers from my grandmothers garden and my mothers. It seems I don’t buy into garden trends and my preference it deeply rooted in the past. The sense of nostalgia that the roses evoke are of a gentle time, playing in my grandmothers garden with my dolls under her huge rose bushes with flowers the size of saucers, thick heavy petals that filled my tiny hands, the snapdragons which my grandad would make talk by squeezing them, I still do this to my children now, even though they’re both in their 20s- it still makes them laugh. The clematis and sweet peas that used to grow in my mothers garden when I was a little, I remember picking sweet peas with my mum and being baffled that she was allowing me to pick flowers every day, what made these so different from the ones I wasn’t allowed to pick I wondered.

Roses, foxgloves, sweet peas, hydrangeas and lilacs- all things I can’t live without. Of course there are many other plants in my garden must-haves, lavender, cosmos, love-in-the-mist, larkspur to name just a few more, but the rose is the most nostalgic of all. I was recently in Italy on lake Maggiore and visited gardens there. I quite like an Italian garden, they have their own charm, however, I don’t think you can beat an English cottage garden full of plants from childhood memories. I know my daughters feel the same. The first plant Chloe rushed out and bought when she moved out was a hydrangea for her garden, I smiled knowingly, my work here is done.

Simply being surrounded by these plants feeds my creative soul! I take a magazine out to read in the morning with a cup of strong black coffee and find I don’t even open it, I’m too busy watching the bees and admiring the flowers, noticing how they have changed since the day before. Putting my energy into caring for my garden, dead heading the roses, watering my pots and pulling a few weeds, it all brings me such a huge dose of calm. The world in which we live seems so much more hectic than it used to, so anything that can bring in a sense of peace is most welcome. Although in this hectic world I was surprised to learn that kindness and chivalry are not dead, let me elaborate. We’re about to go off-piste, it’s no longer about gardens or flowers so feel free to glaze over my next ramblings, but, if you want confirmation that there are still kind people out there, read on.

So I was driving my battered old mini the other day thinking it sounds more like a tractor than usual and trying to remember when I last checked the oil. Anyway, I abandoned it in a car park and went about my day. At 5.30 I walked to the top of the multi story to find my old mini, its bathed in sunshine and I decided I should probably check my oil after she’d been making some unattractive noises, she has developed this clacking sound. Knowing I have some oil in my boot I bought two years ago- after fighting with the dipstick that I still think is lying to me even though I’ve shoved it in four times, a nice lady comes over to ask if I’m ok. It’s clacky I say. ‘That will be the oil’ she smiles with an we’ve all been there nod before checking again if I need her to stick around. I feel reassured by her kindness. I shove my head back under the bonnet, then much to my surprise a youth appears next to me he’s peering underneath too, like he’s an old friend… and starts checking it over for oil leaks. ‘These 08 minis are notorious for oil leaks, my mates ex girlfriend had one, blew up in the end’ he said. How reassuring I thought. I start to protest when he pulls himself under the car but there’s no stopping him. ‘It looks fine’ he say's I check the dipstick after pouring in a measly amount- it still says below minimum. He grins at me ‘You’ll need more than that, about 4 litres.’ I tell him it’s having a service next week. ‘That’s great but you’ll need oil to get it to its service’ he goes off to retrieve some from his boot, makes sure the car is ok, wishes me well and is gone. I’m left a little baffled. Not once did I feel threatened I must add- And I was reminded how chivalry isn’t dead and how a 46 year old woman was clearly not invisible, even to youths. There are still some really kind and genuine people out there. As for the mini, she now has oil and I’ve promised to look after her better.

Emma x